Chapter Ten
It was well past midnight when Sybilla Foxe received the first progress report on the search for Alys and the rogue commoner, Piers Mallory. And although there was no purpose for anyone else to be about the hall at this hour, she was—quite to her disgust—not alone.
Fallstowe’s steward, Graves, stood at Sybilla’s back, as usual, and his was the only presence Sybilla welcomed.
She could be completely alone in the old man’s company should she wish it, or at once have the most trusted and loyal inhabitant of Fallstowe at her council.
But Clement Cobb had come running at word that one of Fallstowe’s soldiers had returned, and at his very heels trod Judith Angwedd.
The sight of the woman was enough now to make Sybilla nauseous, she of the large teeth, girlish coif, and sickeningly sweet mannerisms. Sybilla did not hold the reins of Fallstowe through stupidity or na?veté, and like her mother, she was an expert at knowing when someone was trying to play her false.
While others might have missed the signs, Sybilla had known that morning that Judith Angwedd had seduced Clement Cobb.
It was almost as if the air in the hall had been scented with betrayal.
Sybilla had ordered the entire massive stone floor and all of the furniture scrubbed with strong soap, and incense burned even now—a nod to her mother’s old ways.
She knew that it was likely the reason Etheldred Cobb had taken to her guest rooms all the day with her maid—she was hypocritically mortified by her usually meek son’s blatant indiscretion.
Sybilla didn’t know where Bevan Mallory was, nor did she care.
She watched Clement Cobb, pacing below her dais, wringing his hands.
Judith Angwedd sat at the end of a nearby table, her predatory gaze following him with a transparent smile of contentment.
Sybilla was yet unsure as to why Judith Angwedd had bothered with the sensitive and distraught young man, and she considered the possible explanations while she waited for the soldier to be brought to her.
Perhaps she thought to marry him, increasing Gillwick’s—and her son’s—worth, not to mention her own station.
Perhaps she hoped Clement knew some piece of information that would aid the search for her dead husband’s bastard, although that seemed too much of a stretch. Clement did not exactly socialize in the same circles as illegitimate farmhands.
Or perhaps—and Sybilla thought most likely—Judith Angwedd only sought to interject strife and despair at Fallstowe.
Sybilla had felt the woman’s green loathing of her the instant Judith Angwedd Mallory had first entered her hall.
Should Alys be found alive—pray God—it would be no little blow to her pride for Clement Cobb to have been found unfaithful to his newly betrothed, only days after they were promised and while she was missing and feared dead.
As much as Sybilla detested Judith Angwedd, she surmised the woman was clever. Clever and mean, and it would be in keeping with her character to ruin anything she could that she deemed more or better than what she herself had.
Sybilla would never force Alys to wed a man of so obviously little discernment, but Alys would have to accept someone else quickly. Their time was running out. Perhaps John Hart would still consider the youngest Foxe sister—he had seemed quite eager to find a bride.
As soon as Alys was safely away from Fallstowe, Sybilla would press Cecily for a decision regarding her religious vows.
If none was forthcoming, Cecily, too, would wed.
Sybilla had ignored and then blatantly disobeyed Edward for too long.
Already, the king had called his tenants-in-chief to appear with all owed military service to Worcester at Midsummer for, Sybilla assumed, an attack on the Welsh.
The next time he summoned her and she refused, Sybilla knew that the king would have an endless army at his disposal with which to lay siege to Fallstowe and take it by force under charges of treason.
Or try to, any matter.
But if Alys was already dead, then all her precautions to protect her sister had been in vain, and none of it would matter any longer. She would have failed her mother, betrayed her. Betrayed them all.
The soldier approached, his quilted tunic dirty, but his steps sharp, his expression intent.
In his right hand he carried a small cloth pouch.
At the man’s entrance, Clement Cobb rushed to the dais, his pale, trembling hand gripping the edge of Sybilla’s table.
Sybilla saw Judith Angwedd’s ears—like some feral bitch’s—practically perk.
The soldier’s cracking footsteps came to a halt before Sybilla’s table, and he bowed. “My lady.”
“Have you found her?”
“Not as of yet, milady. We picked up an odd trail of two persons traveling afoot from Fallstowe’s gate into the wood—a large man, and someone smaller, likely a woman.
There seemed to be some sort of a tussle by the way the brush was flattened, but both were well enough after to continue.
” Sybilla was shocked that Alys had been at the very threshold of her own home and then fled, and her mind flew with the possible reasons.
But she held her tongue, letting the man finish his report uninterrupted.
“The trail led southeast, the side of the road opposite the river. We found what we think was a camp, although they had no fire. There was strange scat near the site, containing what seemed to be pomegranate seeds.”
At this, Clement gasped and looked to Sybilla. “Mother’s pet?”
Sybilla did not bother to look at the despicable weakling, only nodded to the soldier. “Go on.”
“Several miles farther, the tracks crossed the road and went down a ravine and to a riverbank. The trail was fresh, we could not have been more than a quarter hour behind them, the daylight still plentiful. But at the river, the footsteps diverged, the man heading away down stream. The smaller footprints backtracked up the ravine and then disappeared.”
Sybilla raised an eyebrow. “Disappeared?”
“The tracks were difficult to follow through the forest without the larger set to mark them,” the soldier explained without apology. “She did not take to the road. But we continued on to the most likely destination for a young woman traveling alone, with night swiftly approaching.”
“And that would be?”
“The village of Pilings, milady. We saw no sign of her, but there was this.” He took a single step forward, deposited the pouch on Sybilla’s table, and then returned to his previous stance.
Sybilla picked up the cloth bag—it felt largely empty. She pulled open the drawstring and upended the pouch into her palm. She looked down.
A gold coin, a stylized image of the king on one side. Sybilla turned it over, and her blood ran cold at the sight of the large, scripted F.
Fallstowe.
She looked up at the soldier, and he had her answer ready before she could voice the question.
“A village woman offered it, reluctantly. Said a young girl had come from the wood begging for food. The woman thought her quite mad until the end of their encounter, when she was offered this in payment for the charity, and then asked if the road through the village was the London Road. The girl left the village in that direction, but there was no trail to follow.”
Sybilla turned the coin over and over in her palm with the meaty base of her thumb and fingertips. “Did this villager say what the girl looked like?”
The soldier nodded. “Hair the color of straw. Mayhap fourteen years. Carrying a bag containing something alive, allegedly”—the soldier cleared his throat—“a monkey.”
“It is her!” Clement Cobb wailed, and dropped his high forehead dramatically onto his forearm. “Oh, my sweet angel, how I have betrayed you!”
“Shut up, Clement,” Sybilla said evenly. She placed the coin on the table carefully, precisely, so that it made not a whisper of noise against the wood. She looked at the soldier again. “Think you she indeed hies to London?”
“Aye, milady.”
Behind the soldier, Judith Angwedd stood with an abrupt screech of the wooden bench. “What of the man? Did you follow his tracks? Where is he?” she demanded shrilly.
No one dare look at Judith Angwedd save Sybilla, who sent the woman her most level, cold stare.
“I have given you no leave to address my envoy.”
Judith Angwedd’s cheeks bloomed a shade akin to that of her hair, although the skin of her neck and around her eyes went snow white. “I must know,” she choked on the rage in her throat.
“Fallstowe’s soldiers were not sent to do your bidding, Judith Angwedd,” Sybilla clarified.
“You are here upon my charity, and that is all. I understand that you wish to intercept this Piers before he reaches London—for fear of what he will witness to Edward against you, likely. But you will hold your tongue while I question this soldier as to my own interest or be gone from this castle.”
“You high-handed sow,” Judith Angwedd hissed, all color gone from her face now, as well as all previously feigned respect from her words.
“I am not the only one who should be fearful of witness against me to the king. Likely your precious little princess will have her revenge on you and see you to the executioner’s block for your family’s fraud against the crown.
And I hope to be there to see your head roll across the green, as your lying, witch mother’s should have! ”
The air in the hall seemed to vibrate, like the moment before a lightning strike.
The temperature dropped, or so it seemed to Sybilla.
She rose from her chair calmly, her eyes never leaving the stricken face of Judith Angwedd.
Sybilla walked the length of the table, her steps measured and sure.
Holding her skirts up briefly, she stepped from the dais, and her heels clicked dully across the stones of the hall, her pace increasing.