Chapter 15 #2
“Do not surrender, my lady,” Amaury murmured, hoping she could hear him, even as he lifted her into his saddle.
She seemed to weigh double in this moment, as if the Fates would conspire against him and cheat him of his strength in this hour of need.
They had to flee this den of treachery in all haste.
“Gates!” he roared to Luc, even as he swung into his saddle and gathered Isabella close.
Luc had already targeted the gatekeeper, who had one hand outstretched for the rope to lower the gates. If the portcullis dropped, they would be trapped inside and at the mercy of Isabella’s attackers.
Luc’s bolt went through the gatekeeper’s hand. The man recoiled, roaring in pain.
“With me!” Amaury bellowed, giving Ténébreux his spurs. His company erupted as one, crossing the bailey and charging through the gates. Luc defended their retreat with an impressive volley of bolts.
They raced through the forest and did not slow before they emerged on the other side of it.
“Amaury?” Luc asked, a hundred questions in that single word.
“I have pressure on the wound, but must slow my pace a little.” Amaury nodded to his squire. “Philip, ride on and find a healer to meet us at Montvieux. Roland will know where Rosalie is to be found in these days.”
“Aye, sir!” The boy gave his heels to his horse, racing ahead.
“You look stricken,” Luc said to Amaury, as if this was a surprise.
“She is my lady wife. She summoned me and I failed to defend her.”
“And this after she had spurned you twice.” Luc shook his head grimly.
Isabella had not spurned Amaury the night before and he knew it well. “What do you say?”
Luc took a breath, choosing his words with obvious care. “You must consider, Amaury, that the bolt might have been intended for you. Her summons might have been a trap.”
“Then it was a poorly contrived one, for she is the one who may die.”
“Anyone can miscalculate,” Luc said.
“She wears my colors,” Amaury said, biting off the words. “She invited me to Marnis. She instructed all there to swear fealty to me.”
“And thus she made you the target of whoever killed Denis to seize Marnis.” Luc was somber. “Who stands yet with an expectation of claiming the holding? Gaultier’s wife?”
“She would not kill her own son.”
“Perhaps her brother is ambitious, then. Or perhaps the lady would wed another of her own choice, and thus you must die.”
Amaury could not believe it. He would not believe it.
“Perhaps the lady knew of the scheme and strove to protect you,” Fraser contributed, prompting the knights to exchange a glance. Amaury saw that Luc was not inclined to give Isabella the benefit of the doubt.
“I believe she saw the assailant take his aim and tried to push me aside,” Amaury said, looking down at her and disliking her stillness. Surely she could not die?
There must have been an authority in his voice, for Amaury reached Montvieux to find an ancient crone awaiting him. He remembered Rosalie from the village, and was glad to see her. He had feared she might be dead, and her knowledge lost with her.
He dismounted and lifted Isabella into his arms, watching Rosalie’s gaze flick over his wife’s features. “I must see the wound,” she said.
“I thought you would be among those fled to Sant-André,” he said, but Rosalie scoffed.
“No one is fool enough to do injury to me,” she said, which was likely true.
At her gesture, Amaury carried Isabella into his tent. He laid her on the bed and stood back, letting Rosalie do as she would. Isabella’s kirtle was cut at the shoulder and she stirred then, shaking her head with agitation and seizing the cloth.
“My mother’s nuptial gown,” she murmured. “Silk.”
“It must be removed from the wound, my lady,” Amaury said. “No doubt it can be mended.” The cloth was soaked with blood and he doubted it could be saved, but he sought to reassure her.
“You must keep it safe,” she insisted. “You must promise me.”
Rosalie’s brows rose, but Amaury strove to reassure Isabella that all would be as she decreed.
She fainted again, even as he was speaking, and he was uncertain how much of his promise she heard.
It distressed him to see her so helpless and still, far more than it had distressed him to see fallen warriors in Palestine.
They had undertaken the task of war. His lady had been injured in her own home.
When the cloth was peeled back from the shoulder, the healer inhaled sharply.
“So close to all of import,” Rosalie murmured, shaking her head. “I must have water, very hot, and clean cloths, and eau-de-vie, sir, a quantity of it.”
Amaury ensured that the healer had every request fulfilled and with haste.
He crouched beside her, offering his assistance though it was not needed.
The bolt was removed, the wound cleansed and stitched.
Through it all, Isabella did not awaken again.
She did not gasp or make a response to any deed.
She did not frown, and there were moments when Amaury feared she had died in truth.
But her breathing remained steady, if shallow, which Rosalie assured him was of the greatest import.
Isabella was so pale, that even when the wound was packed with herbs and bandaged, Amaury was not reassured.
Instead, he folded her gown away with great care, securing it in one of his trunks as she had wished.
He wrapped the stained section in an old chemise to soak up the blood, knowing she would not like to have the squires wash it.
Indeed, the care of such fine material might be beyond even Philip’s skills.
He crouched beside the bed, watching and waiting, hating his helplessness.
“Your lady is one with secrets,” Rosalie said. “Though I would not give you a sou for a woman without any such.”
“What do you mean?”
She reached a gnarled finger beneath Isabella’s chemise and hooked it around a cord Amaury had not noticed. There proved to be a trio of keys upon the cord, though Amaury would not have guessed at their presence, so securely had they been hidden beneath Isabella’s clothes.
To his satisfaction, Rosalie settled back as if she had no intention of leaving the tent. “I will stay until she awakens,” she said and Amaury nodded with relief.
“You would refresh yourself? We have little but it is yours.”
Rosalie chuckled. “I would have a measure of that eau-de-vie, if you can spare it.”
“I can and will,” Amaury said, calling to Philip to make the healer’s request. He declined any of the potent potion himself but sat with Rosalie, keeping vigil over Isabella. Did the hue of her skin improve? He hoped he did not imagine that it did.
He realized that Rosalie was watching him and stirred himself to recall his manners. “Were you here when my father died?”
“Nay, but I heard of it. Only my lord Roland knew I lingered by the river. He found me once when Sebastian had done himself injury.” She shook her head. “You boys were all bold, but Sebastian was the most daring. Your father always said he feared to fall short of your measure.”
Amaury was startled that he had never considered as much. “And so he takes more risk.”
Rosalie nodded. “Though he is blessed by good fortune and seldom suffers for his choices. An angel has watched over that boy from birth, to be sure.”
Amaury wondered if that angel might be his mother, who had died in Sebastian’s delivery. He did not utter such a whimsical notion aloud. “I am glad you were here to be of aid to him then and to my lady today.”
“I tended your mother in the deliveries of all three of you,” Rosalie said proudly. “No one could have fought harder for her survival than I.”
Amaury found himself smiling. “Is Sebastian your favored of us all then?”
“I favor none over the other, my lord. You are all fine men and good sons. I feared, though, that there would be those as blamed him for your mother’s loss, and I vowed to her that I would aid him when I could.”
“My father never blamed Sebastian for what he could not have helped.”
“And a wiser man there never was.” Again, the older woman smiled at him. “You have a challenge before you to exceed his memory.”
“And I mean to do as much.”
“This lady, I wager, might be of aid in that. Though you did not seek her out, she has a reputation for clear thinking and good sense, particularly among those at Marnis.”
“Both her father and brother seemed most unreliable.”
Rosalie snorted. “Greedy and deceitful is what they were. How the lady escaped those traits I cannot say.”
Amaury watched Isabella sleep, noting that her breathing was more easy. “Deceitful? How so?”
“Oh, there were tales, my lord, long before you were born. Gaultier de Marnis was the third of four sons, each more wicked than the next.”
“And yet he inherited his father’s holding?”
Rosalie cackled. “Perhaps Dame Fortune had some assistance in that. The father, Francis, was a tyrant to be sure, and one who died unexpectedly before his fiftieth birthday. Your father was just a boy, then. The same year, not a month later, the oldest son of Marnis, Louis, also met his maker.”
“What a coincidence.”
“Was it? The second boy, Gilles, was blamed though he was never charged. He had seen nineteen summers and was known to be both rash and violent.”
“What happened to him?”
“Who can say? He vanished before the courts could lay hands upon him, and Gaultier, the third son, claimed suzerainty of Marnis. He was much favored by the king, so when the youngest son, Hugues, accused his brother of plotting to gain the holding, he was ridiculed. They said Hugues was jealous and drove him from the gates of Marnis.”
“Another son vanished?”
“Indeed. Then Gaultier wed Eloise de Coronne, a fine lady and a friend of your mother’s. There was amiability between the two holdings then.” She nodded to the sleeping woman, now tucked beneath Amaury’s own cloak. “This lady was her sole child, for Lady Eloise died in the delivery of her.”
“Did you attend her?”