Lynn Wood - Norman Brides 03 (30 page)

For an hour or more the same heavy silence reined, but no signal came from either Colin or the other men trapped underground.  Michel wasn’t certain whether he should be worried or relieved. He had no idea how long it would take Colin to reach the location of the collapsed mine where he assumed the majority of the miners were trapped behind a wall of rock, but at least there had been no additional rock slides, so maybe the ground was stabilizing and they would be able to dig through the slide without fear of another one.

As if to dispel even the uncertain glimpse of hope in his heart, another rumble shook the mountains and more rock crashed down from the steep slope burying deeper beneath another layer of granite, the trapped miners and covering the onlookers in a fine layer of dust.  Hushed gasps and tearful, agonized cries echoed from the families of the trapped men before a more ominous silence fell over the lips and faces of the men who waited for even the smallest sign to give them an excuse to mount a fresh rescue operation to free their trapped friends and comrades.

Michel was done waiting.  If the curse meant to have him anyway, he could at least offer his life in exchange for its bloodlust.  Maybe it would be satisfied with his willing offering and leave his family alone.  He approached the waiting men with a determined stride and reached for a rope from the pile of supplies near them. 

“What you are planning, my king?” Amele gave voice to the misgiving Michel could see in the grime covered faces of the waiting men.

“I’m going in after them.  I shouldn’t have allowed Colin to persuade me to take the task upon himself.  I likely sent him to his death.”

“The boy knew what he was doing, my king, and gladly made this sacrifice on your behalf.  Will you in your grief, make his sacrifice meaningless and at the same time deprive Calei of its king?”

“I know you offer me sound advice, my friend, and a better king would heed it.  But I am not a man who can stand aside and send another to die in his place, to risk all he holds dear in my service when I am unwilling to risk the same sacrifice for myself and my family.  You may blame yourself, my friend, for doing your job too well. I learned most the measure of a man’s honor from you.”

Too moved to respond, Amele nodded briskly and reached out to help Michel with his equipment.  When Michel was ready to go underground, Amele nodded to where Elena waited with a fixed expression on her face, belied by the terror in her stunned expression.  “Your wife and the babe she carries?”

Michel understood what his friend was asking and he raised his gaze to lock with Elena’s.  He’d avoided doing so before, afraid her fear and her desperate love for him would turn him aside from his intent.  He recalled their earlier conversation about the curse on his blood, and her soft words of surest conviction echoed in his ears, “I am not afraid of the price I may one day pay for the great treasure the Almighty has bestowed upon me.  If all I have with you and our babe is a few short years, or weeks or even a single day, I will count myself blessed and settle my debt honorably, understanding and accepting that all great treasures are not bestowed without price.”

Through her tears, she nodded her assent of his plan and his lips curved in a grateful smile.  In that moment he knew he loved her as he could never love another.  If he did not pay the highest price for the risk he was about to take at the urging of his honor, he would spend the rest of the time allotted him on this earth, proving to her how much he valued her.  With an effort Michel pulled his gaze from his wife’s clinging one and turned his focus back to his friend who waited an answer to his question.  “Tell my wife and my son or daughter, that I love them and that I’m sorry I could not be around to see what they would become and to share our lives with each other.”

Amele nodded and pressed him, “You know I would take your place, if you would but allow it.”

“Yes, but we both know this is an undertaking I must pursue alone and if this is to be a final farewell between us, there is something I would have you know.  I mean no disrespect to the father God bestowed upon me, but you, my friend, have always been the father of my heart. Watch over my family as you have watched over me.”

Amele nodded through his tears and the two men exchanged a brief, but fierce embrace before Michel slid from his friend’s restraining hold and picked his way onto the fresh layer of rock, seeking a crevice large enough for him to fit through. 

Across the distance separating them Elena watched her husband, her beloved, her king and the father of her child pass through the narrow opening that he hoped would lead him to where the miners were trapped below a mountain of rock.  Her heart clenched in agony in her chest but no protest sounded from her lips.  As much as she longed to, she knew she could not run after him and throw herself on her knees at his feet and beg him not to leave her.  Not when just moments earlier she had kept her silence, offering no protest, when the woman by her side sent her only remaining son in place of his king, knowing as Elena knew now, that she would likely never see him alive again.

Elena felt the bitter tears of incalculable loss sting her eyes, but she blinked them back.  She was aware of the surreptitious, pitying glances cast in her direction, but she refused to allow the tears to stain her cheeks.  Nor would she acknowledge the others who willed her with their stares to turn to them for release and comfort.  It was not her intent to rudely dismiss such offers, but the futility of them kept her from availing herself of them.

There was no comfort for her to be found except in the arms of her beloved husband. There were no words, no sympathetic gestures, and no offers of assistance that could compensate for the magnitude of her loss.  To pretend otherwise would be to distract the attention of those waiting and listening for an improbable, impossible echo of a faint tapping to sound from the depths of the fallen earth and she would not risk such a distraction with her husband’s life hanging by a thread.

To think her greatest fear these past weeks was that an ancient curse would somehow find a way to steal her happiness and would someday claim her child’s life.  But if she was honest with herself she could admit now that she never really believed it would come to that. Michel promised he would keep her and their unborn child safe.  She believed him. It was only now she realized he hadn’t included himself in his promise. Maybe she was paying the price for their arrogance in assuming they could cheat the fate so many others suffered.  But those other losses seemed far away and were suffered by names only, barely familiar names at that. She didn’t believe the curse was responsible for her uncle’s death.  It was an evil man behind the deed and that man was dead.  Justice had been served. 

The rumors, the old legends, even the death of Michel’s grandfather and his sons barely touched her, and to her mind, lent little credence to the threat of the curse.  Were there not evil men in every generation?  Were they not happy to attribute their evil to a misty bane beyond the reach of men’s minds or their ability to defend against it? 

How condescending she had been when the news first reached her of the mine’s collapse and that there were men trapped beneath the ground. Though she mourned their misfortune it had not really touched her where she lay warm and safe in her husband’s passionate embrace.  She hadn’t fully comprehended what lay behind the vacant stares of the wives and children of those trapped men as they waited anxiously for word, clinging to improbable, foolish hope until even that last tiny straw of comfort was snatched from their clenched fists. 

It was only now that she shared their fate she could truly enter into their stunned shock that their whole world was on the brink of crumbling beneath their feet just as the mountain of rock had crumbled and buried their loved ones. 

It already seemed as though an hour had passed since Michel wriggled his way through the narrow crevice, but she knew it had only been bare minutes since their glances had locked and held and she’d seen the regret in his, as if he already knew he was leaving her a young widow with a child to raise on her own.  She was grateful no one attempted to approach her with hopeful tidings.  If she heard the words, ‘Elena, dear’ accompanied by one more helpful hint as to how she should go on, as to what was the proper way for a queen to behave in such a circumstance, she wasn’t certain she would be able to restrain herself from screaming her denial, her rage, her bitter resentment that it was her husband whose life was hanging by a thread, so unless it was one of the trapped miner’s wives, or young Colin’s mother, who wished to offer their suggestions on her behavior, no one else had better dare attempt to do so.  Or they would soon discover their dear Elena was not such a dear after all.

As word spread of their king’s heroic deed, and dawn wore away into mid-morning, more and more concerned citizens made their way beyond the city gates to where the others already waited, adding their presence and prayers for the safety of the men trapped underground.  If an enemy sought to attack the wealthy kingdom, now would be the time, when even its bold defenders were sick with grief at the loss of their young and courageous new king. 

Through it all, Elena stood, neither shifting her weight nor drawing her eyes away from the opening her husband passed through hours earlier.  Time lost all meaning for her.  She ignored the offers of food and drink offered in quiet, concerned voices. To Elena, they were like so much background noise as were the quiet conversations going on around her and the bracing stories being regaled of prior collapses where all the miners had been found alive and rescued.  She neither focused on them nor gave any indication that she had heard them at all.  She only stood, still as the statues that graced the keep’s courtyard, as she waited for news of her husband.

Beneath his wife’s feet Michel picked his way through the mountain of tumbled rock.  It was a dirty, laborious, exhausting passage but Michel finally found an opening large enough to sit up in and draw a deep breath.  He took a pull from the water in his leather pouch to cleanse his mouth and lungs of the dust that filled his mouth despite the cloth he wore covering the lower half of his face to prevent him from doing so.  He’d lost all sense of time since he left the cool morning air of early dawn and passed through the unwelcoming crevice to the dank, dusty world of buried stone and earth. 

Depressed at the hopelessness of the task confronting him, Michel sighed heavily and coughed up the dirt that was trapped in his throat. He leaned against the rock wall at his back and called out as he had been doing every few moments since he entered the failing mine. 

“Hello!  Can anyone hear me?”  He paused and waited, his expectation of hearing an answering call still not completely doused by his repeated failures to do so.  After a few moments spent waiting for the echoes of his own voice to die down, he cried out again, risking raising his voice to a more forceful level.  “Hello! Can you hear me?”

He let his voice trail off again, but this time, within the silence broken by the echo of his own cries, he thought he detected the muffled cries of other voices.  Hearing them, Michel sat up straighter away from the wall he rested against and crawled across to the other side where he thought the other voices emanated from.  Using one of the iron tools in the heavy leather pouch he wore, he tapped gently on the side of the wall and yelled again.  “If you can hear me, tap twice on the wall where the sound of my voice is the strongest.”

Michel paused and waited. There it was. On the wall to his right, the distinct, impossibly clear sound: ‘
tap, tap’
.

In joyous disbelief, Michel scooted over to the wall and tapped three times.  Moments later three taps echoed back at him.  They were close, closer than he would have believed possible.  “Can you hear me?  It is King Michel.  We have men waiting to dig you out.”

“Yes, Your Highness, we hear you.”

Michel bent his head to the earth in grateful prayer, and then he lifted his head and asked urgently, “Is young Colin with you?  Baron James’ son?”

A moment of silence was followed by an unwelcome response.  “No, Your Highness, we haven’t seen any sign of him. We’ve been trapped here since the second collapse. We were able to dig ourselves out of the initial rock slide and took shelter beneath a ledge when the ground shook and we knew another slide was imminent.”

Michel took a moment to offer a prayer for the safety of his young guardsman, and then replied, “We’re going to get you out.  All is in readiness.  It shouldn’t be long now.  Is anyone injured?”

“Not enough to allow himself to be buried down here,” a relieved voice replied and Michel found his first smile since the news of the mine’s collapse reached him, and he dug in his pouch and removed a heavier tool.  He looked around for the strongest, most stable rock above him in an effort to avoid setting off another rock slide and began tapping.  When no response could be heard from above he tapped harder, and then finally, swung the tool against the rock above him with all of his might, only to be rewarded for his efforts with a layer of dust and gravel breaking free from the bottom of the stone and showering him with its spray.

Disgusted, Michel wiped the grit and tiny stones from his eyes and prepared to change his location and begin again the painstaking process of signaling the surface.  Before he could swing his arm and connect with the rock above his head, he heard it. An answering signal from above.  They knew where they were.  They were coming for them. 

“They heard us.  They’re coming,” Michel shouted into the silence and heard the echoes of joyful relieved cries from the trapped men.