Warrior's Moon A Love Story (32 page)

Lying back down, her mother said, “Leave it to the knights, Chantaya.  Leave it to Peyton.  He’s a wonderful soldier.  Now go to sleep.”

“Yes, Mother.”  Chantaya turned onto her side and tried not to be disgusted.  How could her mother expect her to ignore both what she was hearing and the urgency in her very bones?  Something was going on.  Something big was going on.  She couldn’t ignore it.  She stuffed her pillow into a more comfortable shape and sighed.  She really, truly didn’t want to have to make another frightening, lonely, cold, miserable night ride.

Turning onto her stomach, she opened her eyes to look out the little window at the moon. 
‘Twas Peyton’s moon too.  Her warrior’s moon.  How she wished Peyton was here.  Or that she was there.  He would know what it all meant and what to do.  Why didn’t the king just have the knights capture Lord Rosskeene and be done with it?

Chapter
20

The next morning, Conra
d came into the kitchen with news that the dowager queen mother had passed away two days earlier and the funeral would be one day hence. 

All the blood rushed to Chantaya’s head!  The dowager queen mother!  She had been aged, but s
he had seemed so vital only last week.  Suddenly Chantaya realized.  It wasn’t a church at all!  The cross wasn’t a church!  It was a cemetery!  They were going to try to kill the king on the way to the cemetery!  That was it!  ‘Twas the only way to get the royal family outside the castle gates, because there wasn’t room inside the courtyard for a cemetery. 

She glanced around at Conrad and wondered if her mother would figure it out like she just did.  Then she looked out the window, w
ondering where the men were who were watching them?  Had Rosskeene figured out she was the one who had taken word to the knights?  Or was he simply trying to ensure that no one could get word to the knights that he was about to do something?  And how had Rosskeene known that the dowager queen mother would die?  She turned back to Conrad and asked, “Pray, what did she die of?”

He shook his head.  “’Tis a mystery to everyone.  She took sick the other night after the ball and has gone down hill
since then.  The physicians have no idea, but they suspect she was somehow poisoned by something.  That could just be a guess.  She was nearly seventy.  That’s ancient for a queen.  That’s ancient for anybody.”

Nodding, Chantaya considered what she knew
of herbs and mushrooms.  The dowager queen could easily have been poisoned the night of the ball.  And then Rosskeene only need wait to hear when the funeral would be.  If his attack was set up properly, he might indeed, kill the king and his family while they were grieving her loss. 

She closed her eyes, remembe
ring the sweet elderly royal she had laughed with the night of the ball.  Rosskeene was a monster.  A veritable monster.  How in the world was she going to get past whoever Rosskeene had watching?  How was she going to get past her own mother?

Chantaya tried to appear completely calm as she went about making the breakfast.  Word had to get out to the castle, but it was more complicated this time.  Not that the other two trips hadn’t been difficult, but this time there were those watching and her mother.  How could she get safely away?

She sifted through one idea in her head after another, only to discard them in the same fashion.  She needed to wait for darkness, but that would be wasting precious time and the watching men would probably be far more attentive to someone leaving after dark.  She could leave sooner, but anyone could see her go and she would be missed within a short time.  And how would she get a horse out?  In the dark or the light?  Her mother would suspect instantly if she heard a horse moving.

The noon day meal was over and cleaned up before Chantaya finally came to the conclusion that she simply had
to do something.  She had to try.  She couldn’t not.  There was too much at stake.  Far too much.  The kingdom would crumble under the rule of a monster such as Rosskeene. 

With that thought in mind, she prayed
for a solution the whole way from the manor house to the stable in the early afternoon.  As she finished, just before she entered the big stable door, she looked up to realize there were horses in the far pasture along the bluff.

That was it!  She’d have no saddle, but she’d tell her mother she was going after some spearmint for the night’s dessert and she’d simply not come back.  'Twould give her enough time to at least get past the guards, if she could.

Her mother napped on their bed as she entered their room and Chantaya breathed in deeply as she pulled their biggest basket down.  She filled it with the bread and cheese she had brought from the kitchen, and then knelt to retrieve her boy’s clothing and Mordecai’s wife’s sword from under the very bed her mother slept on.  For the time being, she’d have to conceal the sword down the back of her skirt as she wandered into the wood.  Stuffing the clothing into the basket, she glanced at the sky out the window.  At least it wasn’t raining buckets this time.  There was no way she was going anywhere this time without a heavy cloak. 

Leaving a note for her mother that said simply, “Gone to the wood for spearmint.  And some other things
,” she blew her mother a silent kiss, followed it with a silent prayer and ducked out the door of the stable.  She dearly hoped Conrad had left the halters he had used to take those horses out on the gate post as he typically did.

             
                                        
 
SSSS

The short, blonde man with the ragged goatee had been watching for the girl to come back with her basket for better than an hour before he decided to get up from where he and his cousin Ned were sitting under the trees gambling.  Several times, she had gone with her basket to the woods, and he truly didn’t think for a moment that a girl, especially one that beautiful would be the person who had gotten word out to the soldiers of their activities, but Rosskeene had been adamant that no one was to leave the manor without his permission. 

She hadn’t truly left the manor anyway.  Just taken her basket and gone into the wood there the way she always did.  But she was not usually alone and she typically reappeared after an hour or two.  This time, she had been gone for almost three and hadn’t shown up yet.

He got up and began to meander that way.  This was the easiest money he’d ever made.  Sitting in the shade gambling and drinking.  He won some too.  Ned had never been an overly skilled gambler.  Twenty minutes later, there was still no sign of the girl and he went back and kicked Ned where he lounged, sleeping off the ale they’d been sharing.  “Get up.  Come help me.  That girl took off down here three hours ago and she haint come back.  Somethin’s wrong.  Come look with me.”

Grumbling sleepily, Ned got up.  He scrubbed at his week’s growth of beard, yawned widely, snapped his suspenders into place and followed into the woodland.  His breath near caused the blonde man to gag.  That brown ale tended to sour on you if you didn’t eat something with it.  What time was it anyway?  It ought to be getting near to supper time.

They wandered through the trees and scrub brush on the lip of the stream bottom for another half hour and then walked back to the kitchen to pick up the food Rosskeene’s cook had left for them. Going to their post, they ate it and then walked back into the woods again.  Maybe the girl had come back another way or something.  If they didn’t find her in the next while, they’d go back and ask her mother where she was.  She had to be around here somewhere.

             
                                        
 
SSSS

Cook emerged from the
kitchen garden door and looked around the deserted yards of Rosskeene Manor in complete perplexion.  What under heaven was going on around here this even?  This morning the place had been fair bustling, but tonight, the whole manor was deserted.  That had happened before, but never without the master or mistress planning well in advance for it. 

The Lord and Lady and young master had packed up in a whirlwind and gone flying out with several of their staff with them.  True, the death of the dowager queen wasn’t something that could be planned for, but where in the world had even Isabella and Chantaya and Conrad gotten to?  Never had Cook known them to not show up.   Especially when, to her
knowledge, they didn’t know the Lord and Lady were going to be gone tonight.

She walked over to the stable, shaking her head.  Empty.  Isabella and Chantaya’s door wasn’t even shut securely.  She peeked in and noticed a beautiful blue satin gown tossed across the bed and couldn’t help herself entering and fingering the fine fabric as she wondered why it was there. 
‘Twas far too fancy a gown for a scullery maid to possess.  She stepped back out, closed the door firmly and looked out the big barn doors.  Even the shady characters that Lord Rosskeene had had hanging around here making the rest of the staff nervous had taken off at a high gallop an hour or two ago.  What under heaven was going on?

                                                      
 
SSSS

Chantaya was well more than half way to Mordecai’s when she heard the sound of galloping horses coming on the trail behind her.   She would have been further, but the horse she’d taken from the pasture was being ornery and jumpy and she’d had to fight it to even make it that far.  Without a saddle or spurs, she’d been hard put just to stay aboard at times.  At the sound of riders, she turned off the trail into the woods beside it to ride far into the trees.  It was unbelievably nicer to ride in the daylight, but it made concealment much harder. 

She looked at the woods around her and the shapes of the surrounding hills and then veered left, deciding to simply try to make it to Mordecai’s cross country.  It would be much more rugged, but she hoped she could find her way without returning to the road again.  By now, at least her mother and Conrad knew where she’d gone.  Whether the men watching had found out was a guess, but the sounds of those running horses had to mean something.

She’d made it all the way to within a mile of Mordecai’s when a nighthawk flew up in the gloom of dusk and spooked her horse out from under her.  She felt herself falling and tried desperately to hang on to the reins, knowing she’d never be able to catch this half wild steed if it got away from her.  She kept the reins, but got a rope burn on her hands to show for it and grimaced in pain as she pulled the stupid thing over to a fallen log to get back on.  So much for her believing she could ride anything with hair.  This one trip on this mindless beast had near taken the adventure right out of horses for her.  Not having a saddle made staying on ten times harder.

Finally, she topped the ridge above Mordecai’s small stone house and breathed a huge breath of relief.  She’d made it.  She’d made it with no sword fights, rain storms, or inky black darkness and she couldn’t even believe what a relief she felt.

Bartok neighed from his pen and just as Chantaya felt the horse under her take in air to neigh back, from somewhere behind Mordecai’s cottage, another horse neighed.  It made her pull her own horse up so shortly that it didn’t neigh at all and she nearly went off a second time. 

Something was wrong.  Something was terribly wrong.  There shouldn’t have been a horse behind Mordecai’s house.  At the very least, the savvy old knight would have come out on to the porch to see who was approaching.  'Twas his way.  Never had she come to his home that he hadn’t come out to greet her.  Something was wrong.

She pulled her horse into the thickest woods she could find and tied it securely.  Then, in the gathering gloom of dusk, she slipped closer to Mordecai’s house on foot.  Maybe he just had a cold again.  Maybe he had stepped out somewhere for a few moments.  Maybe . . .

Her heart sank into her belly wi
th a thud when she realized someone had started a fire in Mordecai’s fireplace and smoke was beginning to rise from the chimney.  Mordecai was home.  Something was definitely wrong. 

Sneaking closer, she found two horses behind the house and glimpsed a man through the window in the firelight and her heart sank further. 
‘Twas one of the men who hung around Lord Rosskeene.  She backed up into the trees and knelt down, wondering how they had known to go straight to Mordecai’s.  She was heart sick to realize the help she had hoped to receive from the old knight had just wafted away into the night air like the smoke rising from his chimney.  Looking around in the darkness, she tried to figure out what direction she needed to go to reach Valais.  Panic threatened when she admitted to herself that she wasn’t even sure exactly how to get there and that she wouldn’t be able to go to Peyton’s parents for directions.  The men watching would no doubt be watching the village as well.

Tamping down the anxiousness, she squared her shoulders.  She could do this.  She mustn’t allow any doubt.  She had to make it to Valais and warn the king.  'Twas all there was to it.  Doubt simply wasn’t an option.  She leaned over and rubbed at her temples and bowed her head to utter a short, silent prayer.  Then she picked herself up and sneaked back into the trees toward her horse. 

As she went to hop onto its back from a nearby stump, the skittish creature sidestepped and then spun away from her and Chantaya landed on her back in the understory hard enough to knock the wind out of her and make her wonder if she had started the cut on her ribs bleeding again.  By the time she could breathe again, all that was left of her horse was the quickly receding sound of it running off through the woods in the direction she had ridden in.

Looking skyward, she wanted to rail at the series of events that seemed to keep piling up, but instead settled for another short silent prayer.  It didn’t matter what she was up
against, she had to make it to Peyton.  She had to.  The kingdom was at stake here