Chapter Ten #2
Realising that he too was expected to avert his eyes, Dermot followed their lead, turning ever so slightly.
Still he, stood deliberately at an angle, caught a glimpse of fair skin as Aubrey unbuttoned his shirt and trousers.
His flesh was without malady or the suggestion of one day’s labour.
In the faint light, Dermot could see nothing but the suggestion of skin, catching Aubrey from the corner of his eye as the young man clothed himself in the robe.
His chest heaved as fair skin was shrouded in black. Aubrey appeared like a creature of mourning, his delicate beauty disfigured. Whether the guards would fall for such a charade, Dermot could not safely guess.
‘We have done all we can,’ Noelle said.
‘He makes a fine girl,’ Amy murmured. She exchanged a look with Dermot before coyly looking away.
His preference had become an open secret since his supposed tryst with Thorne. It was another reason to leave, despite Robert playing games with Will upstairs. Done in the dark and safely tucked away, it was permissible, but a working man could not endure such scrutiny.
He put a hand on Aubrey’s shoulder and said, ‘We should go.’
‘Thank you,’ Aubrey said. He made a fine young woman; modest and quiet with a slim figure.
Any man would’ve supposed the garb protected a faultless virgin.
How men remained sane while pursuing such formless figures, Dermot could not guess.
Ever since his arrival in town, his mind had been much taken by pretty sons of bankers and merchants, their skin white and faultless, with perfumed hair and tight trousers.
The lust they provoked in him, unveiled and without a chaperone, was another struggle.
‘Keep your head down,’ Noelle advised. She bade them leave, her hands gesturing to the door with grim finality. ‘You must go quickly. There will be a terrible reckoning tomorrow.’
Dermot hastened to the door, shivering all the while. The guards outside were a great obstacle but the threats beyond were graver still.
‘Go!’ Noelle whispered, peering out the door. Amy stood dutifully by her side. The women, clothed in garments far poorer than what they’d gifted Aubrey, nodded at them as they departed.
‘Come on,’ Dermot said. He dared not touch Aubrey again, even to guide him as he walked in the veil, for he was trembling like a coward. Even noting the quiver in his own voice, he rushed forward.
‘Oh!’ Aubrey gasped. The pair of them had just come from the portcullis where Robert drilled his men to release hot lead on invaders.
Watching Aubrey’s tremor, Dermot lunged forward, his arm bent at an odd angle in his haste as Aubrey fell into him.
Beneath the veil, Dermot observed those lips part ever so, and his own face was again afire.
‘The guards are just ahead,’ Dermot said, helping the boy to his feet and prying his hands away.
Sure enough, two men stood at the gate, chatting to one another without a care for any supposed invasion. One gestured wildly, his friend laughing all the while.
‘What’s this?’ one guard said. His laughter cut short, he turned towards them sharply. A young man, doubtless forced to the island for lack of better work.
‘I’m a servant here, I…’ Dermot began, striving to concoct some tale. Will had, he knew, women who he sometimes escorted from the castle.
‘Name?’ said the man who’d been giggling like an insipid girl. His act of standing still, lips pursed, was nothing more than pantomime.
Erring, for surely his absence was already noted, he had no desire to reveal himself. Should either man go inside to check, his execution was assured.
‘Dermot,’ he said, and upon seeing the men’s expressions unchanged, went on, ‘Hatfield. Dermot Hatfield.’
‘Who?’ said the guard, turning to his friend. ‘Are we supposed to know this man?’
‘Why…!’ said the first guard, the dual radiance of fire and moonlight giving the dimmest outline of his sharp, rugged features. ‘It’s only the fellow who buggered the witchfinder!’
As the guard pointed at him, Dermot’s face burnt with such fervour as to shame every burst of flame.
Never before had he thought such a thing might be said in front of Aubrey.
In his isolation and private tutelage the lordling was schooled in politeness and courtesy, never before having been exposed to such talk.
Aubrey was, he thought, likely the only virgin in the castle, and he’d been kept firmly in hand until Dermot stole him away.
‘That’s obscene,’ Dermot said immediately.
The men burst into excited, rabid laughter as Dermot stood with his fists wound tightly around the hem of his shirt.
‘Obscene, so he says!’ said one guard, leaning back and laughing so Dermot could observe the quivering of his throat. ‘Never mind that. Hard enough to get a woman, it is, and he has long hair. Good for pulling, no? And who’s this?’
Striving for calm, his lips drawn in a thin, tight line that betrayed nothing, Dermot said, ‘This is… well, lads, a woman I met earlier today, truth be told.’ He could think of no better explanation.
Surely it was what Noelle and Amy expected.
Still, the words burned as if to sear one long line across the tip of his tongue; a serpent’s lie.
‘Lord have mercy!’ said the second guard.
‘What, a local girl! Just what are you hiding in your trousers? How can a scullion be rutting every night and the rest of us without even one woman? Dermot, how do you do it?’ said the man who’d accused him of defiling Thorne.
‘A bit of gentleness,’ Dermot said, eyes closed in shame, ‘is the way.’
‘Well, I’ll never,’ said the man, stepping back to the wall. A tacit approval; the town wasn’t obscured now, rather it was revealed in full with hardly anyone loitering. ‘Go on then. Chaperoning her home, are you? What a gentleman.’
Shamed by the encounter, Dermot strode forward without another word, head lowered as if he himself were the girl. Mercifully, Aubrey passed by unmolested. He dared not turn around to face either fellow but, from the lack of shouting, he surmised the men had taken his advice.
‘Were you gentle with the witchfinder, Dermot?’ the second man hollered, who Dermot wrongly took for the more sensible of the two.
This set the guards to laughter, just as they’d been before Dermot and Aubrey arrived. A fine job, he thought, where two men might gossip and shrill like women all day.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dermot said as they walked haphazardly down the street.
The salacious rumours would only harm him.
He had not only stolen Robert’s youngest brother away, but in fleeing the castle, had proclaimed this lordling, likely of a dynasty that began with the conquest of the mainland, as his prostitute.
The rumblings of himself and Thorne were worse; that he would attach himself to such a dastardly man.
The town was not well lit, owing to the Stanleys’ misspending.
It was well known that the treasury’s purpose was to ensure the castle’s decoration, clothe their lords, and pass bribes between enterprising men.
Grinding his teeth uncomfortably at the thought, Dermot set off in the direction of the village.
There would, he supposed, be some merchant passing to the north. Even so, he saw no one who he’d trust in aiding them. Any man out at such an hour was either a criminal or a drunkard.
‘Dermot,’ Aubrey said, shrouded in black lace. His walking in such garb was admirable. ‘Where are we going?
Dermot’s heart seized. He had taken the boy from his bedchamber with scarcely a word. Slowing so they might walk beside one another, he said, ‘You should know those guards lie.’
Shifting beneath the robe, Dermot couldn’t discern the boy’s expression. He could hardly see him at all since they walked in darkness.
A few pretty lights came from the dwindling grey houses as Dermot seethed. It seemed impossible that any other place could so blight the earth as their island. Even wandering, he would’ve ended up in a cold, watery grave mere hours after the walking had begun.
Head resolutely down, fists curled tightly at his side, so did Aubrey murmur sweetly into his ear as the roar of wheels came like a choir from behind. It was so loud that Dermot bellowed like a man possessed, waving his hands in the air as though mad.
‘My God, man!’ the rider called, coming to a stop beside them. His cart was a rickety thing with wood strewn about and hammered poorly in. Evidently he was no man of status, which was all the better for them. ‘What are you playing at? You could’ve spooked my horse.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dermot said. ‘It’s just that we’re in need of help. We must get to a village north of here. North east. Do you know it?’
The fellow peered at them from his cart.
It was practically a chariot for how it could’ve aided them, the man a child of the gods in his impertinence.
‘As luck would have it, I go north east towards the harbour. But why, do you suppose, I should take two vagabonds with me? And this village! How many are there littered about? We are all in darkness.’
‘Well,’ Dermot said, at a loss. It had been a long time since he’d lain eyes on that wretched place; his childhood. To discover it again would be a task.
At a delicate jingling next to him, Dermot turned to discover the gleam of sapphire shimmering back. A choice piece, his favourite of Aubrey’s, now peddled to a tawdry merchant. Pursing his lips, Dermot could watch no more.
‘Why, this…!’ the man said, breath coming sharp, his voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘Certainly a fake! But beautifully made.’ He twisted the thing about in his hands. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Get on, you devil, and help your lady up!’
After a moment of recollection, Dermot twisted around, realising it was he being spoken of. He rushed to the side, grasping Aubrey’s hips and hauling him up before scurrying in himself.