Knight's Rebellion. Suzanne Barclay
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of his men straggling along after him. The castle keep was dark when he reined in before it and slid from the saddle. “Where the hell is everyone?” he screamed.
The steward rushed down the stairs, hair disheveled, still struggling into his tunic. “M-my lord. Welcome home. We didn’t know when to expect you, but I can have a meal in—”
“Silence!” Ranulf backhanded the man, sending him sprawling in the dirt. “How can I think what to do with you posturing and babbling?” He stepped over the cowering servant and stomped up the steps, pulling off his gloves as he went. They were stiff with blood. “Pity it is not that bastard Gowain’s.”
“Aye, milord, that it is.” Clive hurried after him. “What will you do now?”
“Do! Do! I’ll wipe him out, that’s what I’ll do.” Ranulf tossed aside the gloves in disgust. “A hot bath…in my chambers. At once,” he bawled over his shoulder as he threw open the doors to the great hall and stalked in.
The wooden doors struck the wall with a resounding crack. The sleep-rumpled servants jumped, then froze in the act of setting up the tables. Several clung together, whimpering. An old woman crossed herself and tried to slink away.
“You, there, bring wine.” Ranulf threw himself into the massive chair before the hearth, where a new fire struggled to get started. “Curse the luck,” he growled, for the hundredth time in the long hours since the disastrous rout. “If he hadn’t had so many men…if I hadn’t had to protect Lady Alys…” Ranulf moaned and buried his hands in his face. “Damn. I came so close to having her to wife… daughter of an earl…heiress to a fortune.”
“Poor Lady Alys.” Clive gingerly leaned his tired shoulder against the mantelpiece. “Do we go after her?”
“What use?” Ranulf raised his head. “Where the hell’s that wine?” he bellowed.
The steward materialized at his elbow. A livid bruise marred his cheek. His hands trembled as he offered a silver cup engraved with the de Crecy arms. “W-will you break your fast?” he asked.
“Can you not see I am too overset to eat? My dear betrothed torn from my arms by that bastard who dares call himself my kin.” Ranulf gnashed his teeth, then drank deep of the wine.
Clive licked his parched lips, but dared not upset the delicate balance of things by asking for a drink. Then he spied Janie, a skinny wench who’d warmed his bed of late, bravely holding out a wooden cup. Clive thanked her with a nod and gratefully downed the sour ale Ranulf purchased for the servants. Then he waited for his lordship to make his will known.
“Wine!” Ranulf commanded, holding out the cup. “Must a man who’s risked death to save his love, then rode half the length of England with a broken heart, die of thirst in his own castle?”
The only things Ranulf had loved about Lady Alys were her name and her money, Clive thought. “I could take out a fresh troop, milord, mayhap find their trail and follow it to their hiding place,” he added. The time for that was hours past. Coward that he was, when the tide of battle had turned against them, Ranulf had fled with nary a thought for poor Lady Alys.
“What makes you think you’d have any more luck finding their camp than you have before?” Ranulf sneered. “The whole country hereabouts is behind him. The peasants wipe out his tracks when he passes and send us looking in the opposite direction from the one he has taken. You know that for a fact.”
“Aye.” Clive had stood by as Ranulf’s executioner tortured a young farmer into confessing just that.
“What I need to do is turn them against him. I need to make them see he is the villain, not me.” Ranulf drained the cup the steward had refilled, then stared into the fire. The leaping flames cast wild images across his face, igniting an odd light in his dark eyes. “If only Lord Gareth had been willing to declare him an outlaw, but no, he wanted more proof. But now…” Ranulf sprang from his seat, the silver cup rolling across the floor and into the ashes. “That’s it!”
“What is?” Clive retreated a step, for Ranulf was known to kick out at those about him when something went amiss.
“Her father will be only too quick to sign a writ when he learns how his daughter was killed by that heinous criminal.”
“Killed? But we do not know that, milord. It is possible she was taken prisoner.”
“She’s as good as dead to me,” Ranulf snarled. “Think you I’d wed with her after Gowain has used her? Nay, but…” He stroked his grimy chin and began to pace. “You are right about one thing, though. We must convince her father she’s dead.”
“Wouldn’t it work just as well if he thought her kidnapped?”
“Rumor has it these Sommervilles are soft where family is concerned…even their womenfolk. I saw for myself that he’s the type to talk his way around a problem. He’d send messages to Gowain offering to ransom the girl.” Ranulf shook his head. “Besides, there isn’t time. The next shipment of Blue John is due to leave Malpas in a month’s time, providing the roads are safe and we get more workers for Bellamy. Have you seen to it?”
“And where am I to get them?”
“Raid the farms. Clear the streets of Eastham village.”
Clive frowned. “If we take people so close to home, questions will be raised.” The mining of a rich vein of costly fluorspar had remained secret thus far because they’d sealed off all communication with the keep and village. The gemstones were worth a fortune to Ranulf, and he’d promised Clive a fat bonus. “If we took folk from hereabouts and one alarmed relative followed our men, they’d know what we were doing.”
“All right.” Ranulf raked a hand through his fair hair, grimacing at its sweatiness. “Send a patrol to the west of here. They’re to attract as little attention as possible. Raid what farms they can and bring back every able-bodied youth for immediate transport to the mines.”
“What if they run into Gowain’s men? They may look like an undisciplined mob, but they fight like seasoned warriors,” Clive said with grudging respect.
“Damn. He is a continual thorn in my side. He not only starves us by stealing our supplies, he threatens my plans. Well, I won’t have it,” Ranulf snarled. “I’ve worked too bloody hard at this scheme to let that bastard ruin it.”
“Shall I hire more men to guard the roads?”
“Nay. There’s no time. Find me a body.”
“A body?”
“Aye. Young, slender and blond. It will have to be suitably marred, of course, so no one will realize it isn’t Lady Alys.”
“What isn’t?”
“The body in the casket, you idiot.” Ranulf whirled and studied the cowering servants again. “You there, all who are between the ages of thirteen and twenty and fair, step forward.”
No one moved.
“Clive!” Ranulf growled, fixing him with that wild, piercing stare of his. “See to it.”
Clive looked from his lord’s implacable expression to the servants’ terrified ones. He couldn’t do this. But he’d not live if he didn’t. Well he recalled the long, lingering death of the man who’d been reeve of the mine before Bellamy. Black Toby had foolishly thought to skim off a bit of Ranulf’s mine profits and been skinned alive as punishment. Clive’s own back crawled, then he recalled Janie weeping over the death of a childhood friend. “I have heard that a young woman died in childbed a few days ago,” he murmured. “Let me go into the village to ask the priest what she looked like and if she has yet been buried.” Lowering his voice further, he added, “Why deprive yourself of a servant if a body is to be had?”
Ranulf nodded. “Aye, I’ve few enough to serve me as it is, what with those faithless jades who’ve run off to join him.” His fist clenched. “Gowain