Chapter Seventeen
Coven Castle
Four days after Cortez’s departure, Andres was still keeping his father in the vault of Coven, although the cell was considerably more luxurious than any vault in the country outside of the Tower of London.
Most prisoners did not sleep on comfortable beds with servants to tend their every wish, but Gorsedd had just that. He lived like a king.
Andres was with him daily, sitting with his father for hours on end and listening to his father talk about family history. He kept relieving the death of his grandfather, over and over, pounding the horrible end into Andres’ brain and then cursing Diamantha for her family ties.
It was an exhausting experience for Andres, who was growing increasingly resentful that he had to remain with his father while everyone else continued on to Scotland.
By the end of the fourth day of listening to his father rant, he’d finally had enough.
Gorsedd was in the process of describing his mother’s torment with the de Velt raid on her ancestral home when Andres finally exploded.
“Enough!” he shouted, startling his father. “Great Bleeding Jesus, do you have any idea how foolish you sound? You are living in the past, old man. You are living the horrors that your family has already lived. When does it stop? Tell me that, Father – when does all of this horror and hatred stop?”
Gorsedd looked at Andres with a mixture of hurt and anger. “Your great-grandfather was impaled on a stake, alive, and….”
“I know!” Andres roared, putting his hands on his head in anguish.
“I know he was impaled alive. That is all I have heard for days and days. But he is dead. The man who did that to him is dead. And you have had the gall to blame a woman who never knew her ancestor and who has probably never done a terrible thing in her life? That makes you a beast, do you hear? You are a foolish old beast living in the past and you do not care who you hurt with old hatreds. When are you doing to stop this? Don’t you realize what it is doing to you? Or me or Cortez?”
Gorsedd wasn’t used to Andres yelling back at him. The man had sat and listened to him rant for days and hardly said a word about it other than pleading for calm. Now, Andres’ irritation was unleashed and Gorsedd was offended by it.
“Your family is everything,” he pointed out angrily. “We have an obligation….”
“The family you speak of is dead!” Andres yelled, interrupting him.
“Everyone you are speaking of is dead and no amount of talk can bring them back. But your family is alive. Your boys are alive. Cortez and I are your family and all you have done is hurt Cortez by blaming his wife for something she had no control over. Is that what you want? To hurt Cortez? The man adores you, Father. See what damage you have done to him with your hate-mongering. What do you think Mother would have said to that?”
Andres’ words gave Gorsedd pause. He fell back to regroup, trying not to think on Allegria de Bretagne’s reaction to his behavior but he couldn’t quite ignore it.
Even in death, Allegria was a very strong personality and he could just hear her yelling at him in Spanish, and then in a language he could understand when he would plead with her.
He could hear her yelling even now. Nay, she would not have been pleased with his behavior at all.
She adored Cortez, her eldest son, and had been fiercely protective over him.
“You’ll not bring your mother’s memory into this,” he said to Andres.
But Andres would not be stopped. “I can and I will,” he said. “You know that what you did was wrong. You hurt Cortez and you hurt his wife. If Mother were alive, she would make you beg forgiveness. Well? What are you going to do about it?”
Gorsedd looked away, he had to. He could no longer face Andres because the man was correct, he was absolutely correct.
“Your mother is not here, so your question has no meaning,” he grumbled.
Andres pulled something out of his tunic and slapped it down onto the table next to Gorsedd.
When the man looked over, he saw the pieces of the silver collar he had torn from Diamantha’s neck, the collar that had once belonged to Allegria.
The woman had worn the necklace constantly, as much a part of her as anything else was.
The sight of the collar had Gorsedd slipping into deep uncertainty.
“Mother is here now,” Andres said, pointing to the collar. “Look at this and tell her why you hurt Cortez and his wife. Let her tell you what a fool you have been.”
With that, Andres quit the cell, locking it before heading up the stairs to the ground level above.
Gorsedd sat long after his son had gone, gazing at the pieces of the silver collar, seeing it around the neck of his wife and hearing her words in his head.
That necklace embodied all that Allegria de Bretagne had been; strong, shiny, and beautiful.
She was the love of his life, much as Cortez and Andres were.
Family was everything. His family. Perhaps it was time to let the past die, after all.
Collecting the pieces of the collar, he held them to his chest and wept.
*
Penrith
It was like old times that evening at The Bloody Cross, minus Andres, whose presence was sorely missed.
Cortez sat with James, Oliver, and Drake at a table that was wedged up against the front of the tavern, near the front door, and angled so that they could see everyone coming in through the front door before those entrants saw them.
After having food and copious amounts of hot water sent up to Diamantha, Cortez sat in the common room with his men and enjoyed the meal and conversation.
The room was even more packed now than it had been when he’d arrived, full of travelers, merchants, whores, a few soldiers that belonged to him, and other soldiers that did not.
He thought he saw a few men bearing colors he recognized, the colors of Baron Coverdale who controlled a good deal of land in the area, but he couldn’t really tell and he didn’t want to stare because staring was often taken as a challenge.
So he listened to Drake tell stories about his wild brothers, laughing appropriately when Drake’s humor harangued out of control.
He knew for a fact that Drake was the wild brother although the man managed to hide it well.
“Will Andres be joining us at some point, Cortez?”
It was a question from James. In private, Cortez permitted his knights to address him by his given name because that was the level of trust they had between them.
These men were as close to him as Andres ever was, men who had been with him through both good and bad times.
He took a long drink from his cup of wine that was heavy and tart, and smacked his lips.
“Hopefully,” he said. He eyed his men a moment before continuing.
“I have not spoken to you about my father’s behavior since it all happened.
I suppose I can tell you that I do not know much more about it than you do.
You heard what my father said and even when I tried to speak with him afterwards, he still adhered to those views.
Andres remained behind at Coven Castle not to be my father’s jailer but to be his caretaker.
According to my father’s majordomo, it would seem my father’s mind has been failing him as of late, which possibly explains his behavior.
In any case, Andres is there to see for himself.
It is his intention to catch up to us in a week or two, but I suppose time will tell. ”
The knights digested the information. It was Drake who finally spoke. “I knew Rob Edlington for years and I never heard that Lady de Bretagne was related to Jax de Velt,” he said what they were all thinking. “A fearsome and dark heritage she bears.”
Cortez nodded. “One hundred years later, one would hope that people have forgotten about his atrocities but evidently that is not the case,” he said. “Seeing how my father reacted, that is more than likely knowledge we should not speak of outside of this circle.”
The knights agreed, sipping their wine in silence, until James suddenly snorted into his cup. The other three looked at him curiously.
“What do you find humorous about that?” Cortez asked.
James shook his blond head. “It is not the fact that she is related to de Velt that I find funny,” he said.
“I was thinking of my great-grandfather, Christopher de Lohr, and how the man must have bargained with de Velt for the marriage contract. Can you imagine being in the room when England’s two greatest warlords face off on the subject of their children?
A marriage, no less? By God’s Bloody Rood!
Oh, but to have listened in on that conversation! ”
Cortez’s lips twitched. “De Lohr must have faced the man in full armor, even for a contract negotiation,” he said. “I cannot imagine I would have sat in a room with de Velt and not have had every bloody weapon I owned strapped to my body.”
The knights snickered. “I would have done it from the other side of a closed portcullis,” Oliver muttered.
“It is common knowledge that my parents came from two families that hated each other for generations, and their marriage was shocking enough. But marrying into the House of de Velt… I cannot imagine what de Lohr was thinking.”
“Mayhap their children were in love,” Drake said. “Wasn’t it his daughter who married de Velt’s son?” When Cortez nodded, Drake continued. “Then that settles it. The man probably had no choice. How could he deny his daughter if she loved a de Velt offspring?”
“Easily,” James said. “He could have sent the woman to a convent or beat the foolish notion out of her. One way or the other, marrying into the House of de Velt, especially back in their generation, must have been an appalling prospect.”