Chapter 21 #2
The threatened soldier spoke loudly, his fear evident in his words. “If you kill me, all the lives in this hall are forfeit!”
At her side Julian spoke low. “Run?”
Sybilla considered it. But she knew they were surrounded by soldiers who were no longer under Julian’s command. They were inside the gates, the keep surrounded. If they ran, and if they were caught, they would both be killed on sight.
Sybilla felt Lucy’s weight most heavily in her arms.
There will come a time when you will see that what I say is true. When you love someone so much that it does not matter what happens to yourself or anyone else. You will lie or steal or kill to see them safe.
There will come a time, and you will see.
“I will go willingly,” Sybilla answered.
“Sybilla, no!” Julian hissed.
“But,” she said, ignoring Julian’s protests, “the child will not. There will be none to care for her. She shall stay with her nursemaid.”
“I will not leave Lucy,” Julian growled. He stepped toward Sybilla, pulling his daughter from her arms.
The guard still at the mercy of Graves’s sword argued. “This is some ploy. The child goes, as well.”
“What do you think her to do, you cheese-headed oaf? Incite a rebellion? She’s an infant. And as none of your proclamations place her under arrest, she is in no better hands than here at Fallstowe.”
“No, Sybilla,” Julian said. “I can’t—”
“Julian,” she said in a low, cool, calm voice. “I have trusted you. Would that you show me the same courtesy.”
“She’s my child,” Julian pleaded in a cracking voice.
She looked at him then, clutching the baby in his arms, his face a mask of fury and fear.
“She was to be my child, too,” she breathed. “You will see your daughter again.”
She saw Julian swallow. Then he hesitantly nodded.
Sybilla looked back to the guard. “If you agree that the child shall remain at Fallstowe to be cared for, I will go willingly to London, and none of your men will be attacked. If you refuse, I will send up the battle cry.” She paused.
“You may have a bloodless victory, or fantastic carnage. Your choice.”
The man frowned furiously at her, but then nodded. “Very well. I give you my word. Call off your man and send for the child’s nurse.”
Sybilla nodded toward her steward, and Graves lowered his sword and took a step away from the man.
“Nurse?” she said pleasantly, pointedly.
Graves stepped forward, both hands clasped over the hilt of the sword still hanging in front of him. “You called, Madam?”
“What kind of nonsense is this?” the soldier demanded. “You expect me to believe that this old corpse is a baby’s nurse?”
Sybilla raised her eyebrows at the man. “Would you agree, sir, that it is a fact that Lady Lucy’s original nurse, a girl named Murrin, is no longer at Fallstowe?”
The man frowned. “Yes, that is true, I suppose, but still—an old man?”
“Graves is the most trusted servant Fallstowe has ever known.” She looked to Graves and hoped that the love she felt for him was evident in her eyes. “There is no one better to protect Lord Griffin’s child in his absence.” She nodded toward Julian. “Go on, Graves,” she ordered softly.
It took the old man a moment to walk to the dais steps and gain the platform. Then he laid his sword down carefully upon the lord’s table and turned to Julian, his wrinkled and knobby fingers outstretched.
“Would you come with me, please, Lady Lucy?”
The baby stared wide-eyed at the old man and shrank back against Julian for a moment.
“Graves . . .” Julian said in a choked voice, and then halted as if unable to speak further.
Sybilla barely heard the old man’s query to Julian.
“Think you this is the first precious daughter placed in my care, Lord Julian?”
Julian kissed Lucy’s head firmly three, four times and then handed the baby to the old steward.
Graves turned away, the baby still regarding him with wide eyes. “Let us go find a nipple, shall we?” he said soothingly, and his eyes met Sybilla’s when he passed her.
Sybilla hoped he would hear her. Send him after me tonight.
He nodded once at her, the motion so slight that no one save Sybilla would ever have noticed.
And then he was gone.
Julian turned to face the hall aggressively as the king’s man stepped forward with chains. Erik refused the pair offered to him, obviously intended for Julian.
“Never,” Erik said, his chin lifted. “Not under the threat of death.”
Sybilla did not look at Julian again as her dagger was removed from her side, the cold bite of chain fastened around her ankles and wrists.
There will come a time, and you will see.
The time had come. And Sybilla saw.
Within moments, the men who followed Erik had laid hands to Julian’s trunks and his thick leather portfolio, filled with the history he’d collected about the Foxe family.
He and Sybilla had waited in the hall, both shackled in a primitive manner on opposite sides of the room.
She would not meet his eyes. And she spoke not another word to anyone.
Outside the hall, though, the bailey was in pure chaos.
Word had spread quickly from the household that Madam was being taken from them, although Fallstowe’s soldiers made no move to attack the tight ring of the king’s men who made a living corridor for the prisoners to walk through.
The servants and villagers felt no fealty to the king’s men, however, and they pushed against them in a mighty, furious wave, shouting obscenities, hurling eggs and dung at the royal soldiers.
Sybilla did not acknowledge them with the slightest glance, only walked calmly between her personal guards—one to each side and one to the fore and aft.
Julian noticed that none of the men dared touch her.
Likely very wise.
Julian followed, an officer to either side of him.
At the end of the avenue of soldiers, a strange, fortified conveyance waited, with a soldier posted on each side of the open door.
It was a wooden carriage of sorts, but the planked sides had been bolted over with close strips of thick iron, the windows barred.
A team of six sturdy horses had been harnessed together tightly to pull the monstrosity.
Julian had to laugh out loud when he saw the crucifixes fastened to each face of the imposing-looking rolling dungeon.
Then Sybilla did glance over her shoulder at him. “Flattering,” she said with a smirk.
“No talking,” the man to her left shouted, and made the mistake of shoving Sybilla’s shoulder roughly.
She did nothing more than pivot her head quickly toward him, but in the next instant the man was lying on his back in the dirt. Fallstowe’s citizenry went mad, pelting the man with rocks and manure until he cried out in a panic and was helped to his feet by his fellow soldiers.
Sybilla ignored it all, stepping up into the carriage awkwardly, no man daring to give her assistance after what had just happened to their comrade.
The soldiers quickly moved to shut the door, even as her skirts slid inside, and Julian watched as a series of three locks along the seam of the doorjamb—all as big and thick as his own fist—were latched with loud clicks.
Then a chain was dragged through two loops across the width of the door itself and secured.
Julian was afforded his own mount, although he would have much preferred accompanying Sybilla in the ridiculous wheeled prison.
The chains around his ankles were removed, but his wrists were left bound.
It was more than he expected, especially since Erik had already departed for London, ahead of the massive wave of soldiers, leaving Julian without his friend.
They rolled through Fallstowe’s gate and over the drawbridge in a sea of soldiers that seemed to be a mile long; one small woman the remote island in the very middle of it all.
Julian saw two men astride some distance away, watching the passing mob of boots and swords and banners. He looked closely.
One of them had the blocky silhouette of Piers Mallory, Lord of Gillwick; the other, Julian could only assume, must be Oliver Bellecote.
Julian did not signal to them in any way, only turned his head forward and rocked in the saddle.
He trusted Sybilla, and so he would trust these men that she had deemed worthy of her sisters.
They would be completely loyal to her—Sybilla would accept nothing less, and she gave nothing less to those whom she loved.
For some reason, that realization stirred an uneasy feeling in Julian’s stomach.