Prologue #2
Fenella was stiff with anger, with concern, but she knew better than to fight with him. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to kick her out and it wouldn’t be the last because she fully intended to remain.
She knew how to change his mind.
Sauntering up to him, she reached out, putting a gentle hand on his crotch. “Ye’re overwrought, my love,” she said seductively. “Let me bring ye peace and calm. Let me…”
He shoved her away, roughly, and she ended up smacking her hand into the banister of the wall walk. It was wood, just like the walk itself, but it was hard and unforgiving, and she yelped in pain.
“You’ll not use your whore’s tricks on me,” Roget growled. “I told you to get out.”
Fenella used the next weapon in her arsenal. She began to weep loudly. “How could ye be so cruel?” she sobbed. “How could ye hurt me? I’ve done nothing wrong!”
Roget was so angry that his lips were turning white.
Abruptly, he pushed past her, heading back into the gallery that lined the second floor of the hall.
Fenella’s tears stopped instantly as she ran to the door, watching him move towards the steps that led down into the great hall.
It was clear to her that he was leaving, presumably to summon his army.
Roget had been angry before but not like this.
She’d always been able to calm him down, but today…
today, he acted as if he meant every word.
Fenella’s attention turned to the smelly, smoky courtyard.
“Win!” she cried. “He mustna leave!”
Win was standing by the fire, blending in with the other Scotsmen who were crowding the courtyard. He was big and brawny, not an unhandsome man, but wicked to the bone. He looked up, seeing his sister pointing towards the hall, and he grabbed a couple of his men as he rushed into the hall.
At that point, Roget was just coming off the stairs, right in front of him. With Win’s men crowding into the doorway and into the hall, Roget was cut off from the exit. Win stood in front of him, looking at the man as he stood on the bottom stair.
“Ye’re not looking at this the right way, laddie,” he said to Roget. “If we’re here, then no one will bother this place. We’re like an army, protecting it. It makes it safe for my sister to live here.”
Somewhere in the complex, Roget could hear a woman screaming and it distressed him. He may have been a man who kept a mistress, but he wasn’t barbaric. He sighed heavily.
“Get out of my way,” he said.
Win shook his head. “Not until ye see reason,” he said. “We will protect Mordrington. That’s a benefit to ye. Dunna ye see?”
Roget’s gaze began to dart among the crowd of men in the hall. He’d come alone and it was clear that he was coming to regret that decision.
“You are not protecting Mordrington as long as you raid the countryside,” he said. “You bring your booty back here and sooner or later, the bigger warlords of the area like de Wolfe and de Longley are going to figure it out. They’ll come here and they’ll destroy this place.”
Win shook his head. “Why should they?” he said, grinning a gap-toothed smile. “Ye’re an ally, Roget. They’ll never look here.”
Roget simply shook his head. “Let me pass,” he said. “I told my men I would return tonight and if I do not, they’ll come here looking for me, so it is best if you let me leave.”
Win sighed, with regret. “If I let ye leave, ye’ll return with yer army.”
“I will not need to if you leave.”
“We canna leave. We’ve nowhere to go.”
He said it in a way that suggested hazard. Feeling threatened, Roget took a step back, up the stairs.
“This place does not belong to you,” he said, trying to sound brave. “It does not belong to your whore sister, Fenella. It belongs to me and I am telling you to leave. Get out and there is no need to bring my army. Remain and I will have you burned out, if necessary.”
Win scratched his chin, looking at his men. “Burned out, he says,” he said to his men, who were nodding as if intrigued by the suggestion. “The man says he wants tae burn us out. What say ye?”
They started to laugh. The situation almost seemed humorous.
But it was a deception; the laughter abruptly faded, and a roar went up among the men.
They rushed Roget before he could run back up the stairs, grabbing him by the hair and arms. He was swarmed as they dragged him back out into the courtyard that had been ruined by their habitation.
The massive fire was burning in the middle of it and as Roget screamed, they tossed him straight into the fire.
The group of men roared in approval.
On fire, Roget scrambled off the pyre and tried to run, but they pushed him back into it and he fell face-first. At that point, everything ignited, but he still tried to run, only not as forcefully this time.
He slithered off the pyre, onto his knees, fully engulfed in flames as he tried to get to his feet.
But someone hit him in the belly with a chair from the great hall, a chair that had been dragged out into the courtyard, and Roget fell back onto the pyre, squirming helplessly as the flames consumed him.
It was a heavy, oily smell that began to fill the air as his flesh burned.
Win and his men stood back, watching until he stopped moving before carefully pulling him off the pyre.
He was burning and smoking, but clearly dead, and they let him burn a little while longer before Win had his men doused him with buckets of water.
By then, Roget was a charred shell, but he was still somewhat recognizable. Fenella, lured by the shouting and screaming and smoke, stood just outside the doorway leading into the hall, seeing what had become of the man who had been her lover for twelve years.
Win caught sight of his sister.
“I’m sorry, lass,” he said. “Ye know I had tae. Ye know what he was going tae do.”
Fenella wasn’t quite sure how she felt; that was clear from the expression on her face. She was shocked and sickened, but not particularly grieved. In fact, once she realized what had happened, she seemed to take a deep breath as if to reconcile herself to it.
There were no tears.
“He had wanted ye tae go before this, but I always put him off,” she said, fixed on the smoking, wet body. “Ye did what ye had tae do, I suppose. But why not burn him tae ash? Why leave him like… that.”
Win went to his sister, putting a brotherly arm around her shoulders.
“Because if he disappears and his men knew he came here, they’ll come looking for him here,” he said.
“We’ll take the body back towards Trastamara and make it look like he came across bandits and they put him on their fire.
These woods are full of outlaws’ camps. He stumbled across one and they killed him for it. ”
Fenella watched the smoldering body, wondering what her life was going to be like now without Roget’s money. That was the only thing on her mind – not his loss of companionship or the loss of the sex between them, but his money.
That was the only reason she’d ever stayed with him.
It had been that way since the beginning.
Roget had been handsome and mildly amusing, but he was mostly rich.
There was some money at the manse, but Fenella depended on a stipend from Roget every month.
However, she was, if nothing else, resourceful.
There were sheep to sell at Mordrington.
There were fine furnishings and the jewelry Roget had given her.
She could sell everything for a load of coinage before Roget’s widow came and threw her out.
There was time yet to strip the place clean.
“It will have tae do, I suppose,” she said after a moment. “But this place doesna belong tae me. It belongs tae Trastamara. Did ye ever think about that? They’ll come tae throw us out, eventually.”
Win shrugged. “Then we’ll find another place tae hide, but until then, we’ll bleed Mordrington dry. Cheer up, lass. The man who kept ye as his whore is no more. Ye can find another man tae keep ye. Keep us.”
He laughed, heading back to his men, who were starting to drink heavily as Roget’s body smoked a few feet away. Killing a man was all in a day’s work to them and they thought nothing of it.
A man’s life had no meaning to them. All they were concerned with was their immediate situation. Transient as they were, they didn’t think much beyond that. It was kill or be killed, live for the moment or die a fool’s death. Life, love, and noble pursuits had no meaning to them.
That was the mentality of The Brothers.
The next day, Roget’s body was found in an abandoned camp five miles away, charred over an old fire, but the wheels set into motion that day were not anything Win or Fenella or any of The Brothers could have anticipated.
The countdown to a greater upheaval on the borders than they could have ever imagined had begun.