He stopped her thrashing by pinning her wrists to the floor with one of his massive hands, then pinched her left nipple until she gasped with pain.
Merciful Mother, help me endure! Meriel prayed. Tears streamed down her face as he separated her legs, and she knew that only a miracle could save her now.
Then, just before he could force his way into her, the door was thrown open with such force that it slammed into the wall with a hollow boom. Meriel looked up, desperate for any interruption, and saw a tall, heavy woman whose green robes were so rich that she must be the lady of the castle.
Though her face was white with fear, she strode across the room toward her husband. "Let her go! I will not have this!"
Guy could not have looked more startled if one of the chairs had begun to talk. Releasing his grip on Meriel's wrists, he sat back on his heels, an ugly expression on his face. "What do you think you're doing, you stupid bitch? Have you suddenly become so jealous of my favors that you would dispute my right to plow another woman? Does that mean you will no longer be an icicle in my bed?"
The countess came to a stop just out of his reach. "It means that this time you go too far," she said, her voice shaking. "You have dishonored the name of Chastain for years, but I will not permit you to ravish a gently born woman under my roof.''
"You will not permit me?" Guy stood, his beefy face incredulous at her effrontery, then struck his wife across the side of the head. "Just how do you propose to stop me?"
The countess staggered back from her husband's blow, but she was much larger than Meriel, and she managed to stay on her feet. "I cannot stop you myself," she agreed unsteadily, the mark of his palm blazing red across her white face, "But remember, this castle was mine before it ever was yours! To most of the servants and men-at-arms, I am Chastain, not you. You can abuse me as all men abuse women, but you cannot murder me with impunity, not without risking revolt."
Maddened, he shouted, "Do you truly believe that you have any power here? I am the one who gives the orders, and I am always obeyed. I could flay you alive in the great hall and there is not a man at Chastain who would try to stop me!"
The countess stood her ground, though Meriel saw that her hands were clenched knuckle-white. "Are you sure enough of that to test it?" she asked softly. "Do you think you are so well loved that men will follow you no matter what atrocities you commit? Your power is built on fear, my lord husband, a foundation no stronger than sand. Perhaps no one would oppose you publicly, but are you proof against a knife in the back? Or poison in your wine? Are you fool enough to want to find out the hard way? Kill me and you will never sleep peacefully at Chastain again."
With a howl of frustrated rage, Guy hit his wife again, this time in the chest, using such force that she went reeling back against the bed. But to Meriel's amazement, the other woman's arguments had prevailed. The earl strode to the door and bellowed for a guard. When one appeared, he snarled, "Take this skinny bitch back to the dungeon!"
During the confrontation Meriel had scrambled to her feet and stayed away from the combatants, praying that the gallant countess would not be murdered right in front of her eyes. Now she darted out the door with the guard before Guy could change his mind. As she escaped, she heard him say with cruel deliberation, "And now, my lady wife, I will give you what you were reluctant to see go to another."
Meriel cringed as the countess uttered a dark, anguished cry. Then the door slammed shut and Meriel heard no more.
* * *
After the scene with Guy, the dungeon was a welcome refuge. Meriel wrapped herself in the blanket for warmth and modesty, then prayed to the Blessed Mother to preserve the countess. It took hours for her shaking to subside.
Under her fear was the strange thought that even at his worst, Lord Adrian had never inspired the revulsion she felt for Guy of Burgoigne. Adrian had been a man obsessed, dangerous and capable of ruthlessness. But she doubted that he was ever wantonly cruel, like Guy.
Lord Adrian knew the difference between right and wrong and was capable of feeling remorse at his own lapses from grace. Indeed, his real struggle had been not with her but with his better self. Guy was merely vicious, with none of the qualities that made men more than beasts.
The dim light was beginning to fade when the trapdoor opened. Meriel expected her next meal and was surprised when the ladder was dropped. Looking up, she saw the countess descending the ladder, a bundle awkwardly tucked under one arm.
"Merciful Christus, my lady!" Meriel exclaimed, horrified. "Is Lord Guy imprisoning you too?"
"No," the other woman said. "I just came to assure myself that your condition is not unbearable."
Reaching the bottom of the ladder, she turned to face the prisoner. Meriel gasped at the sight of the savage bruising on the larger woman's cheek. "Sweet Mary," she breathed, tears forming in her eyes as she gently touched the marks. "I'm so sorry. He beat you because of what you did for me, didn't he?"
The countess's lips twisted in a bitter line. "He did nothing that he hasn't done to me a thousand times before. At least this time I was beaten for doing something worthwhile."
Meriel said quietly, "I thought your action was the bravest thing I have ever seen."
Their gazes held, and Meriel saw an easing in the other woman's eyes at the tribute. "Thank you," the countess said, her voice equally low. "I have not always been brave."
More briskly, she handed over the bundle she carried. "My name is Cecily. Here are some garments to replace those that he tore. They are nothing very fine, but should fit you reasonably well. I have given orders that you receive the same food that is served in the hall. Is there anything else you need?''
Meriel thought wistfully of a hot bath, but didn't think it a practical request. "Might I have a bucket of water a day to wash myself, and a comb?" After a moment's hesitation, she added, "Also, do you know if the people who were captured with me are all right?"
Cecily nodded. "I have already visited them. They are a little crowded, but otherwise well enough. The master and mistress have done a good job of maintaining the spirits of their people. I shall do my best to see that they are not abused."
Her voice dropped so that no one in the chamber above could hear. "I'm sorry I can do no more. My husband ordered two of his personal guards to follow me everywhere. If it weren't for them..." She shrugged expressively.
"You have already done a great deal, particularly for someone who is a stranger to you." Meriel shifted the bundle of clothing, and was surprised to feel something hard in the middle. Unfolding the top garment, she looked down to see the wicked glitter of a small, narrow-bladed dagger.
Meriel lifted her head, and her gaze met that of the countess for a long, wordless glance of acknowledgment and thanks. Swiftly concealing the weapon again, Meriel said, "May God bless and keep you, Lady Cecily."
"May He keep both of us," the countess murmured. She touched the smaller woman lightly on the shoulder, then climbed the ladder.
Meriel wondered how old Lady Cecily was. Though she was too heavy, her complexion and features were good, but years of hopeless misery had drained away whatever youthful prettiness she had once possessed. It was something of a miracle that she had survived years of marriage to Lord Guy. Perhaps her sense of responsibility for Chastain enabled her to endure.
As Meriel changed into her new clothing, it was impossible not to hope that soon Guy would be facing heaven's judgment for his crimes.
Chapter 19
It took two days of furious activity for Adrian to assemble his army and march to Chastain. Alan de Vere had chafed with impatience, but privately admitted that the task could not have been done any more quickly. Richard FitzHugh brought his men from Montford in little over a day. The morning after FitzHugh's arrival, the combined troops made a fast march to Burgoigne's castle, the mounted men arriving late one afternoon with the foot soldiers half a day behind.
Before leaving Warfield, Alan had asked the earl what he intended to do in respon
se to Burgoigne's demands and was told that it depended on how events unfolded. It was a cool answer, but the expression in his brother-in-law's eyes reassured Alan that Meriel's safety was not going to be forgotten in the excitement of going to war.
Though there was not yet war between the two earls, both sides undertook the preliminary steps with the ordered rhythms of dancers. It was child's play to force the gate in the Chastain village wall, and the Warfield forces arrived at the foot of the castle to find the drawbridge raised and the castle ready to defend itself against possible siege.
Lord Adrian ordered everyone from the village, giving them an hour to collect their essential possessions and leave. Since it was summer the villagers' lives were not threatened by eviction, but they left with the grim expressions of people who did not expect to see their homes again.
Alan thought Lord Adrian would fire the village immediately as a message to Burgoigne, but instead he quartered his troops in the newly empty cottages. If there was going to be a long siege, his men would be well-housed.
Richard FitzHugh, as second in command to his brother, took an escort of knights and rode to the main gate. In a shouted exchange with Burgoigne's lieutenant, Sir Vincent de Laon, time and conditions were set for the two earls to meet. The time would be mid-morning the next day, the place the Chastain drawbridge, which would be let down only after the Warfield troops had visibly withdrawn half a mile from the castle.
Alan watched the negotiations, approving how Warfield's brother handled the details. Richard FitzHugh had played the role of peacemaker when Alan had showed up at Meriel's wedding, and further acquaintance proved that he had a naturally equable disposition, though negotiating with Sir Vincent had visibly strained his temper. Occasionally something in FitzHugh's eyes made Alan suspect that darker currents flowed under Richard's golden surface, but he was a far easier person to be around than the earl, who radiated cold, lethal fury.
Until the meeting took place, there was little to do, so Alan occupied himself by exploring the village and environs. The knowledge might prove useful later. He stopped at the parish church, which was set on a hill at the farthest end of the village from the castle. In the nave he found the priest tending several sick parishioners who had been given special dispensation to stay rather than being forced into the fields.
After stopping at the Lady Chapel to pray for success, Alan climbed to the top of the bell tower. Because of the church's elevation he was almost on the same level as the curtain wall of the castle. Under the slanting golden rays of the setting sun, the scene was a deceptively peaceful one. The wind rippled both Guy's blue boar banner above the castle and the silver hawk planted before Warfield's headquarters in the village.
An air of tense expectancy lay over castle and town, as if it was a vast chessboard with white and black kings opposing each other. And somewhere in the castle was the captured queen, Meriel. Alan did not doubt that his sister was alive, for she was too valuable a prisoner to kill.
Did she know her husband and brother were here, drawn up in full feudal array to fight for her to the death if necessary? Or was she locked away in ignorance?
During his years of service with Lord Theobald, Alan had fought his share of skirmishes and sieges, and had even been in one full-scale battle, but never before had a prospective encounter been so important to him personally. He would have offered to fight Burgoigne in single combat with Meriel's life the stake if the other man would have accepted, but well he knew that Warfield was Burgoigne's true target. Neither Alan nor Meriel were of any real importance to that old enmity, though both their lives might be forfeit in the coming struggle.
Alan did not much care if the two earls killed each other. But as the sun disappeared below the horizon, he vowed that he would do all in his power to save Meriel not only from Burgoigne but also from the man who had coerced her into becoming his wife.
* * *
"Let us lie down and just relax in each other's arms," Adrian suggested. And she did, finding infinite peace and comfort.
Then she awoke, and peace became passion. "What is in my heart is love," she had whispered. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." They made love with sweetness and wonder, and in the morning they had prayed together, holding each other's hands, as innocent as children.
Meriel gradually emerged from sleep. She was no longer shocked by such dreams, for she had had them every night since she had been brought to Chastain. Now the dreams were invading her days as well as her nights.
She studied the light in the cell and decided it was very early. Her morning meal would not be served for some time, so she began on the routine she'd developed. First she softly sang one of the Benedictine offices. After that she performed a series of exercises to prevent her muscles from stiffening with inactivity. Not a great deal could be done in a room that was eight feet in its longest dimension, but she felt better if she stretched and trotted in place twice a day.
Exercising done, she washed herself as well as possible in the bucket of water that was now provided daily. During her first bath two days before, she'd discovered barely healed scars on her arm and leg, apparently a legacy of her attempt at self-destruction. Her lips thinned as she realized that not only her mind but her body had become strange to her.
Still more difficult to accept was the message implicit in the sensitivity of her breasts and her occasional bouts of nausea. She did not doubt that she carried the child of her captor, but had no idea how she felt about that shattering fact. Meriel loved children, and her chief regret when she'd thought she would never marry was that she would never have a babe of her own. But she'd never dreamed of having a child in circumstances such as these.
After her sparse bath, Meriel unbraided her hair, combed it out, then braided it again. Her hair was nearly finished when the trapdoor lifted and her first meal of the day appeared.
The guards must have been ordered to silence, for they no longer made even the simplest of comments. Meriel had spoken with no one since Lady Cecily had come to the dungeon three days before. Meriel suspected that when Guy learned of that visit, he'd ordered his wife's guards to keep her away from the captives. Lady Cecily had some power, but it was sharply limited.
After Meriel had eaten, she sat cross-legged on her pallet and cleared her mind. She had chosen to spend as much time as possible in prayer and meditation, since floating in the hazy worlds of the spirit was the best way of dealing with the fear, loneliness, and lethal tedium of her prison.
Ever since the second day of her captivity, strange new images had begun drifting up from the lower levels of her mind. The scenes showed an Adrian who was tender and loving, a Meriel who adored him in return. As though she were a spectator, Meriel had seen herself marry. She'd laughed with her new husband, exchanged secret thoughts in the intimacy of the night, made love with him speaking the words of Solomon's Song.
Piece by piece, the lost weeks were being restored to her memory. Meriel was no longer horrified but grimly accepting. She comforted herself that it was better to know the truth, no matter how dreadful, than to be at the mercy of ignorance. She no longer doubted the dreams and images, for they were too detailed, too full of the texture of life, to be false.
Meriel forced herself to accept the devastating knowledge that when injury had returned her to a state of primal innocence, she'd fallen in love with Lord Adrian, and it had been the most richly rewarding experience of her life. Just as Adrian was two different men, she had been two different women, and it was impossible to reconcile the differences.
In the face of such unpalatable truths, Guy's dungeon was almost appealing. She was reasonably well-fed and comfortable, and she knew what to expect each day. Far more alarming was the prospect of being freed and brought face-to-face with Lord Adrian again. In the name of all the saints, what would she do then?
Captor and enemy; husband, lover, and father of the child she carried: Lord Adrian was all of those things. Meriel had both hated and loved him. And af
ter all that had happened, she had not the remotest idea of how she truly felt about him.
* * *
In the full armor and panoply of an earl, with Richard at his right hand, Alan de Vere on his left, and his hawk standard carried before him by a squire, Adrian rode the short distance from the village center to the gates of Chastain. He was not surprised to find that the drawbridge had not yet been lowered. He fully expected Guy to try to provoke him with every kind of minor humiliation possible.
When they reached the edge of the moat, he and the others dismounted, leaving their horses in the charge of squires. Then they went through an elaborate show of casualness, as if they had nothing better to do than chat idly of the state of Chastain's defenses. Fortunate that Richard was present to carry the burden of the charade, for Adrian was strung tight as a crossbow and Alan was little better. Richard was also charged to keep an eye out for archers who might have orders to shoot the rival earl, since neither brother had any faith in Burgoigne's honor.
Finally, after an hour or so, Guy and several of his men appeared on the wall walk above the gates, their mailed figures silhouetted against the sky. Adrian guessed that Guy would stay up there rather than lower the drawbridge, since it gave him the pleasure of looking down on his enemy.
As Adrian walked unhurriedly to the closest approach, one of the men said in a voice intended to be overheard, "Warfield is the short one, Lord Guy."
Adrian almost smiled. Burgoigne must think other men envied his burly height and breadth. Adrian was not in the least upset by the fact that Richard and Alan both had several inches on him, so he called out pleasantly, "Is your eyesight failing with your advancing years, Guy?" His early training in monastic chanting had left him with a voice that carried easily without shouting. "Or is it your memory that fails you?"