Conquer the night, p.19
Conquer the Night, page 19
“So is Wallace. So are we all, John.”
“Aye, but Wallace has lightning in his eyes. He draws men. His passion is what binds us. Even at Irvine, while our nobles squabbled and sued for Edward’s peace, Wallace’s men found an English baggage train, killed its defenders, and made off with immense treasure, which we will need. Nay, we’ll not back off again. It will be de Moray and Wallace leading the men when we face the English now, and that I swear to you! De Moray is a wealthy man, Wallace the second son of a small landowner, a lesser knight! They will come together, and others will join them, and cousin, I beg of you, you must!”
“Aye, I intend to fight, and you know it, John.”
John nodded, watching him. “Good. There’s more.”
“Aye?”
“Kinsey Darrow has learned of your being here.”
“Does he ride here even now?”
John grinned. “One would think! I was told his fury was so great that he nearly went into apoplexy. He almost killed his own messenger. But he was warned by sounder minds to wait for greater force; last I heard, he was awaiting the Earl of Harringford and his forces.”
“Powerful forces.”
“Aye, but they’ll be called to join the English as they hunt down Wallace. Cressingham is a fool who believes himself up against no more than rabble, but he knows it to be a large rabble, and the command from the king is that the Scots be crushed.”
“Where was Darrow?”
John looked down for a moment. “At the manor of old Tigue MacDonald.” He hesitated a moment. “He had the old man meet a traitor’s death, strung him up before all his tenants, hanged him, gutted him, chopped him into fours.” John spoke bitterly. “Pillaged, robbed, murdered, raped.”
MacDonald. A good man, a fierce old fellow without a moment’s compromise or doubt in all his life! Arryn thought.
Another hatred against Darrow that burned at his very soul!
“He is not so far.”
“Still, I believe that the Earl of Harringford will command him to join with the army before coming here.”
“Perhaps. Still, I’d best see that the guard be far more than just wary.”
“Aye, and Arryn, we need all that you have seized here! Our men are fierce fighters, rich in spirit, yet poor in weaponry. Have you stripped the armory here?”
“That I have. And we’ve the smiths working day and night to repair swords, finish those begun, repair what plate and mail were left…. Aye, there was fine armor to be had here, and we have stripped it all. My men will be armed.”
“Is there more?”
“Aye, there are those who still have hand-hewn pikes, nothing more.”
Arryn lifted a hand, hearing footsteps on the stairs. Jay came into the main hall. “Arryn,” he began, then paused, arching a brow with a hopeful grin. “Aye, John, a great war council! Tell me, for the love of God, that all goes well?”
“Aye, Jay. And will, by God, be better. Tell me, man, can you fashion a sword?”
Jay shrugged. “Well, I have fashioned an opposing swordsman, upon occasion.”
“Lady Kyra has returned to reside above?” Arryn asked sharply.
“Arryn, as you commanded, I returned her to the chamber, demanding to know how she had escaped, of course. She said that she did not escape, merely left the room. You left no man on guard, and did not slide the bolt.”
Aye, he had grown precariously lax! He had not slid the bolt because, at the back of his mind, he knew that they could be counterattacked at any given time.
And the castle might well be set to the torch….
He’d have no one else burn, no more of the scent of charring flesh to haunt his dreams; he’d not have her die….
As had Alesandra.
“Did you slide the bolt now?”
“Nay, I came to ask what means you would take to keep the lady within.”
“I will see to her,” Arryn said. Jay was a good friend who knew him well and seemed to understand him at times when he didn’t understand himself. “We were discussing the urgent need for arms,” he said to Jay.
“Well, we have plundered this castle.”
“And you have fashioned many a swordsman …” John murmured. He stared at Arryn. “What of the fallen?”
“Aye, John, we took every sword, knife, and blade from the fallen—the enemy, and our own.”
“But have you really taken weapons from all the fallen?” John inquired, a touch of humor in his eyes. “And those who might not have fallen quite so hard?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What of the great men of this fine edifice who have found their eternal rest in their shrouds in the shelves of the crypt?”
Startled, Arryn looked at Jay, then at John. He shrugged. “I admit, cousin, we had not thought to rob the dead, though the dead have the least use of mortal weapons!”
“Shall we to the crypt?” John queried.
“No!” The sudden cry was cast down as an indignant gasp. Looking up, Arryn saw that Kyra had decided to depart her tower prison once again. Had she meant to slip by him, or simply to spy on him? Either way he felt his temper simmering. He looked at Jay, but Jay shook his head, and he realized he was the one in command.
“Lady Kyra!” he said coldly. “So you have chosen to join us again.”
“No!” she repeated passionately.
“No?” he queried, his voice deep and grating. “Ah, lady, it is a word I hear from you too often, and so strangely, for you are in no position here to give command!” Arms crossed over his chest, he sat at the end of the table and watched her as she came down the last of the stairs.
Her head was bare; the length of her red-gold hair rippled down her back, and her eyes had never appeared a deeper emerald. She ignored his reprimand. “You would stoop so low, sir, as to rob the dead?” she demanded. Passion and indignation were in her voice; her breasts rose and fell with her words and her fury, and he was struck with the thought that she was indeed far more than a beautiful woman—she was a rare one, with fire and spirit, and something within her that he wanted still! That Darrow hadn’t had apoplexy at her loss did not seem at all to make him a stronger man, just a greater fool.
“Do you hear me, Sir Arryn? It is a vile crime indeed to steal from the dead, sir! God will not forgive you such an act.”
“Oh? God discusses what He will and will not forgive with you, my lady? Have you taken to communing with Him in the self-imposed exile you have enjoyed the last few days? How curious, for I believe He will forgive me. This will be a lesser crime, I think, than that of which we are all guilty—robbing the living of life,” he said flatly. “Come, John, as you suggested, to the crypts. Kyra, you must join us, and pray for us in the good Christian spirit with which you gave warning—or, lady, do the dead rest in the chapel above us?”
She was not about to answer him. He rose swiftly, catching her arm as she started up the stairs. His fingers wound around her wrist. Up a few steps, she looked down at him with her eyes surprisingly filled with tears, and all the more dazzling for them.
“If you think that I will help you—”
“No matter. But you will accompany me.” His eyes locked with hers. “Jay, call for Gaston, and ask him where we will find the castle’s revered dead.”
Gaston, bobbing and ever courteous and cheerful, informed them that the dead rested deep below in this tower. All they need do was take the back set of stone stairs, yet they must take a torch, for the caverns beneath were as dark as any pit of hell. “But Lady Kyra could have told you that,” he finished, smiling at Kyra.
“Aye, she could have, but she did not.”
“Why would you see the dead?”
“We would borrow their weapons.”
“Borrow?” Kyra spit out.
“Ah, lady, they were mostly good Scotsmen, I’d imagine, and would be glad to lend a hand to a cause of their country! Bring a torch then, Gaston,” Arryn ordered.
“Aye, Sir Arryn.”
John took the torch; Arryn took Kyra’s arm, keeping her wrist locked firmly in his grip.
The stairs were damp. Though it was summer, the region tended always to be cool, and as they went lower the stone became cooler still, and the air around them became all but frigid. A good way to preserve the dead, he thought. The esteemed corpses of Seacairn would be all but icicles.
They reached the ground floor and an archway that surely dated before the arrival of the Normans. Deep within the cavernous hallway that opened to them next was a room filled with stone shelves, and upon those shelves, the nobility of centuries—ladies in elegant gowns, men in arms and armor, the fragile texture of their shrouds shielding them from the living. Arryn saw immediately that John had been right—many of the old lords and privileged knights of Seacairn had been laid to eternal rest with their weapons. Swords glittered in the firelight of the torch that John carried to lead the way.
“There are many, many!” Arryn said, pleased at their discovery. Dragging Kyra along, he walked to the wall. He didn’t think of the bodies that haunted their vision, of the dozens of men and women, some hardly changed in the cold of the cavern, some decayed to bone.
He pulled the shroud from a dead man at eye level, taking the handsome claymore at the corpse’s side in his left hand. Kyra wrenched at her wrist, trying to free herself from him.
He gazed at her, startled. In his pleasure at the cache, he had almost forgotten her.
Her face was ashen.
“Do you know, my lady, what Kinsey Darrow has been doing?”
She froze, refusing to answer.
“He has just murdered an old friend of mine. And I am the one committing a crime here? Come, though, we’ll leave the crypt behind; there are so many weapons here that I will have to send my men to retrieve them.”
He started from the crypt, pulling her along. To his surprise she pulled back. He turned to meet her eyes.
“Not my father’s!” she whispered. “Please don’t disturb my father’s site!”
He arched a brow and turned slightly. Into the rock that made up the shelves, the names of each of the dead had been chiseled. He saw that the old lord of Seacairn was just a corpse away from the dead man he had disturbed.
He looked back at Kyra. “Why, my lady, isn’t your father’s sword the weapon you used against me when I came to find you in the chapel?”
She shook her head. “It was my own.”
He arched a brow again. But of course. If she had learned swordplay for her own amusement, she would have had a weapon made, one less heavy than the blade that such a man as her father would have carried.
“Please!” she whispered. “Don’t disturb my father’s grave.”
John, behind them, cleared his throat. “Perhaps one weapon will not make a difference.”
Arryn continued to stare at her. “Give me your sword, then, my lady, and we will let your father’s be.”
“You have it. Your men took it after you bested me in the chapel.”
“I still say, lady, that it is up to you.”
She searched out his eyes; then her gaze fell. “Don’t take my father’s sword.”
He watched her for a moment, then looked to John. “I’ll send men down now to assist. You’ll get all the weapons we can supply. See to it that the body of Lord Boniface is not disturbed.”
“Aye, Arryn.”
“And you, my lady …”
“I will return to the tower, Sir Arryn,” she said.
He nodded to her, a slight, grim smile curving his lips. “Aye, lady, that you will.”
Ragnor kept the bulk of the men at work in the fields; John and Jay supervised the removal of all the available weapons from the corpses in the crypt.
The corpses held more than weapons. Many of them had been laid to rest with jewels, medallions, gold and silver chains, brooches, and more. John appealed to Arryn; the men had asked if there were not riches to be sacked from the castle as well. Since Edward—and even de Moray and Wallace—had been known not just to sack churches but to burn them to the ground as well, he determined that the men fought for an uncertain future, and God knew, some small piece of jewelry might buy them an escape sometime, when the tide of war did not go their way. He allowed the riches to be removed, but the corpses were to be respectfully shrouded once again, and when they were finished, Father Corrigan was to give a blessing. Father Corrigan reported tartly that he wasn’t certain just what prayer was used for the ravaged dead, but that he would find something. It was when the day’s work was done, when the training in the field had ended and the dead within the crypt were left in peace again, that Father Corrigan found Arryn upon the parapets, and reported that he had asked God’s blessing on the dead again, just as he had requested.
It was late, very late. The night guards remained awake, and few others, and Arryn had not expected the priest to search for him that night.
“You’re appalled, Father, that we’ve robbed the dead?” he inquired, leaning back against the wall. He had come here for his own peace. The summer night was beautiful—the warmest so far. If it were not for the very cold stone of the castle, they might not even need a fire for warmth, even into the wee hours of the night. The stars were out against an ebony background in the distant sky, and the breeze that touched his flesh was balmy.
Corrigan shrugged. “I heard about your earlier comment, Sir Arryn, to Lady Kyra. The crimes we commit against the living are far greater.”
“Ah, Father! You’re a man of God. What crimes, sir, do you commit?”
“Sir Arryn, what do you know of any man? In my past, sir, there remain sins untold.”
The priest was a striking dark fellow, as tall and well built as any warrior. A curious man, Arryn had known from the beginning.
“Against the living—or the dead?”
Corrigan leaned against the wall, looking out at the night. “There are all manner of sins, sir. Pride is one.”
“Murder another.”
“Lust … vanity. But I would say, sir, that pride is among my greatest, and the dangers it causes! But I am the priest—I have no desire to unburden my soul to a layman, sir, no matter how powerful and wise.”
“Ah, so you would mock me, Father.”
“Nay, Sir Arryn, I do not. Nor do I condemn you for your sins against the dead!”
“Only against the living.”
Corrigan hesitated. “Only against the Lady Kyra.”
“That is all, Father?”
“It’s the greatest sin of all, Sir Arryn, to refuse forgiveness.”
“Lady Kyra has not asked my forgiveness.”
“She has not sinned against you.”
“What of Kinsey Darrow?”
“One day he will have to answer to God.”
“Nay, Father, one day he will have to answer to me.”
“Perhaps.”
“And what of King Edward? What will he say to his maker?”
“All men must face a final justice—even kings.”
“Vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord, eh, Father?”
“Aye, Sir Arryn.”
“So … we should all prostrate ourselves before Edward?”
Corrigan smiled slowly. “Nay, Sir Arryn. And thereby my own sin, my own pride, for I cannot, will not.”
Arryn nodded slowly. “I have told you, Father, that when I leave here, I will leave the lady in good health. That is a promise. I swear it.”
“That’s not enough.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Take her with you.”
“To the battlefield? Nay, Father, that would be madness! God knows if we can win this … and God knows as well, she is loyal to Edward, and to Darrow.”
“Sir Arryn—”
“That is all, Father. Good night.”
He did not expect the priest to leave, but departed himself.
He entered the tower room, certain that he would find Kyra there—after all, they had made a deal, even if the promises had been subtly given. He thought that she would be in the chair before the fire, as she had been the past nights.
But the fire burned low, and the chair was empty. Nor did she sleep upon the rug before the hearth.
Puzzled, his temper already beginning a slow boil as he wondered what trickery she might be about, he carefully entered the room, and quietly closed the door behind him. He looked about in the shadows of the room, then realized she lay beneath the sheets and furs upon the bed. He felt an instant quickening in his groin, a constriction of his muscles, a hunger in his very soul.
He determined he would not betray it so. Striding into the room, he began to disrobe. The mound within the bed did not move.
She would feign sleep, he thought.
The last of his clothing tossed aside, he approached the bed. He sat by her side, then drew back the covers. Her back was to him—naked, sleek, her flesh gold perfection in the dying firelight, the curve of her buttocks enticing, the scent of her sweet and feminine. She tormented his senses, haunted his loins, teased him as no woman had before. He found himself running a finger down the length of her spine and speaking to her mockingly.
“Do you think, my lady, that in life, your father would have so willingly traded his sword for your honor?”
He was stunned when she flipped with uncanny speed—a sword clutched in her hands and pressed instantly to his throat.
Her emerald eyes were alive with fire, with triumph. And he was ever more the fool. He froze at first, damning himself. He was not going to die for Scotland, or for glory or freedom. He was going to die for being a fool.
The point of her blade pressed against his flesh. His eyes met hers, filled with rage.
“Up, Sir Arryn!” she commanded.
With little choice, he clenched his jaw and rose—the point of the blade led him to rise. She followed.
“This is one weapon you failed to steal, sir!” she told him.
Standing, feeling the point of the blade, he returned her stare. “Your sword, my lady? You lied, I see, and my men failed to retrieve it when you lost it in fair battle?”
