Chapter Twenty-one #2
the vials of potion Ravenna had bought for them. “Well,” she added
with some satisfaction, “not everybody.”
Count Nithard and Ravenna had returned
to Oloron Manor right after the new year, without Ranulf or
Lothair, neither of whom had shown their faces in the valley since
the attack on Lara and Talon. Lara had caught glimpses of Ravenna
and the count as she made her healer’s rounds of the villages and
toths, but today was the first time Ravenna had come within fifty
paces of her, walking over to Lara’s wagon and staring at her
belly.
“So,” Ravenna said with a
snide smile. “It’s true. The lidi
is with child. How common.”
Patience gasped and then hissed
through her teeth, but Lara smiled.
“I might have taken
offense as you intended, except I know you speak from jealousy.”
She rubbed her hand over her round belly, remembering the feel of
Talon’s hands on her skin. “I can’t say I blame you. The captain
truly is a man to be jealous over.”
“Bah,” Ravenna huffed.
“You’re nothing more than a cheap camp follower whose soldier is
off to get himself another whore before getting himself killed on
some battlefield.”
Lara’s breath caught, and it was
Patience who answered Ravenna’s taunt.
“You may be jealous of the
captain’s attentions,” she said, “but you so do not know
him.”
“All I need to know is he
left her pregnant with his bastard.” Ravenna sniffed and wrinkled
her nose. “My father will be so pleased to learn the rumors are
true. The witch is breeding.” She gave a toss of her long black
hair and turned on her heels. “Come, ladies. We’ve seen all we
needed to.”
Lara let her breath out in a low hiss.
“Talon was right to name them a pack of curs.”
“Aye. What a
bitch.”
Lara laughed and gave Patience a
hug.
“Hey now.” Willem walked
up to them with Wilric in his arms and Wyatt by his side. “Trying
to steal my wife, are you?”
Lara gave Patience a wink. “I might
be. I could use a good wife.”
“Speaking of wives.”
Patience indicated Denys and Marta as the couple headed toward
them. “When is that lad going to turn man and make a wife of
her?”
“He says not until he can
buy a patch of land and build her a proper house on it,” Lara
said.
“They’ll have to move from
here then.” Willem spoke out loud what they all knew but were
reluctant to say. “No one but Nithard has land enough to sell here,
and he won’t sell. He’d rather starve out the few of us who do own
land here, so he can have it all.”
“He can try,” Lara said
fiercely. “He will fail.”
“Have you seen this?”
Patience asked hopefully.
“No. But I feel it.”
Before Lara could say more, Denys and Marta approached
them.
“There’s to be musicians
and a dance tonight,” Denys told Lara as Marta eyed her with
anticipation. “Will you stay?”
“I plan to be sitting by a
fire with my feet up by nightfall,” she told the crestfallen
couple. “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave, Denys. Stay,
enjoy the dance with Marta.”
“Are you sure? The captain
told me to watch over you.”
“I’ll be fine for one
night, Denys.”
The lad glanced from Lara’s reassuring
smile to Marta’s pleading one. “If you’re quite sure?”
“Go.” Lara waved them off.
“Have fun. Stay as late as you like.” She grinned as they skipped
away hand in hand.
“I don’t think Denys is
going to get his land and house before his marriage,” Patience said
as the young couple stopped to kiss. “He keeps that up, and Marta’s
going to be as full of child as you next spring.”
***
Lara
Lara trudged up the
mountainside, her feet sore and her belly heavy with child. She
made her way through a thicket of brambles into the glen where her
mother was buried. A doe-eyed woman with curls of gold stood beside
the rose-covered byre with a swaddled babe in her arms.
“Who are you?” Lara
asked.
“I was Isabeau.” The
woman’s voice sounded as sweet and trilling as a lark’s. She held
the babe out to Lara and laid it in Lara’s arms. Lara gazed down at
the head of soft auburn curls and wide gray eyes staring back up at
her. “She is Isabeau.”
Lara looked from the babe
to the woman, whose hair grew white and her skin wrinkled. She was
no longer staring into the woman’s eyes, but into
Sophie’s.
“Run,” Sophie said, her
breath turning to smoke. “Now.”
Lara woke with a start to Wolf’s bark.
Glancing wildly around the dark, she recognized her bedchamber,
blew a shaky breath out, and ran a hand back through her
sweat-dampened hair. From below, Wolf’s barking became louder and
more insistent. Lara slipped out of bed and crept over to the
window facing the river and peeled a corner of the oiled skin back.
Three men sat on horses, one holding a burning torch.
“That’s her hellhound
barking inside,” one of the men said. “It’s never far from the
witch’s side. Light your arrows. The count wants her
dead.”
Lara clasped her hand over her mouth
to keep from screaming. They meant to burn her alive in her home.
She crawled on her hands and knees and peeked out the window facing
the road, where two other men waited on horses with lit arrows. If
she tried to run, she had no doubt they’d spit her and roast her
over the coals.
She threw her cloak on over her
nightshift and grabbed her boots and one of the gowns she’d
altered, then scrambled down the ladder as the first arrow hit the
thatch roof with a thunk and a hiss. Then another. And
another.
“Come, Wolf.” The smell of
burning thatch filled the air, so she pulled the trapdoor open and
pushed the shaking hound down into the cellar, then dropped her
clothes and boots down after him.
She grabbed the pot of water hanging
on the spit over the hearth and took it into the cellar, then
climbed back up, closed the trapdoor, and poured the bucket of dish
water over it. Glancing around the room, she swiped the carving of
the elephant Talon had made her off the mantel, climbed down the
ladder, and pulled the dripping wet door shut. She lit a candle and
cut one of the blankets in the cellar into strips that she dipped
into the pot of water and stuffed into the cracks around the door,
then she huddled with a trembling Wolf in the far corner of the
cellar under another blanket.
The smoke soon became thick and
choking, burning her throat and eyes. She dipped the corners of the
blanket into the pot of water and held the wet ends over her face
and Wolf’s, concentrating on slowing her shallow breaths as the
roar of the fire drowned out everything but the beat of her
galloping heart.
***
Talon
The army left Worms the first of March
and marched east until they met up with the Saxon bands raiding
across the Rhine. It took them a half a month to beat the Saxons
back across the river, and the entire, miserably wet and bloody
month of May chasing down and skirmishing with those still
scattered and hiding in the hinterlands before their leader
surrendered to Charles. By late June, the king and the bulk of his
army were back in Worms, where Charles gave Talon the deed to
Crossroads Keep along with three hundred acres of field and
pastureland. His troop of twenty had lost three men in battle, and
of the remaining soldiers, five decided to join Talon and start new
lives in Oloron, four rode for other homes, and eight joined
another company.
It was decided that Anglbert,
Dardinel, and tree would return to Oloron first. Anglbert, to
prepare for the others’ eventual arrival, hire workers, and set
Lara up as mistress of the keep while enjoying Berta’s cooking and
other attributes; Tree to be Lara’s and the babe’s personal guard,
and Dardinel, son of a farmer, to oversee the tilling and planting
of fields and fencing of pastureland. Talon would ride for Frisia
with Phillipe and Oswald to buy a string of broodmares with their
collective coin, coin that Charles had added generously to as a
wedding present for Talon and Lara, and first choice at buying any
foals Talon was willing to sell.
They left for Frisia the middle of
July, nine months since Lara had first lain with Talon at the
Hollow, which meant their babe was due to be born any time now. He
told himself Lara was strong of both mind and body, a healer
surrounded by women like Berta and Enid and Patience, who’d borne
their share of children. She’d be fine. The babe would be fine. He
told himself this day in and day out, his constant, silent prayer,
which let him do what he should, which was ride north, away from
his lady and his child, so he could return ready to make a life
with and for them. A long, prosperous, happy life.
He intended to marry Lara as soon as
he returned to Oloron. If she would have him.
He’d wronged her by not marrying her
after the Hollow, by not telling her he loved her until the day he
rode away. Her smile when he’d finally admitted it out loud had
kept him warm during the long, interminable days and nights he
spent slogging through the swamps of Saxony. The light in her eyes
kept him determined and hopeful he’d return to her a whole
man.
Ready to be a husband and
father.
To spend the rest of his life with
her.
Talon rode hard for that life, making
Frisia by August and returning to the northern border of Gaul by
September with two dozen broodmares in tow. They stopped in Tours
for the Fall Festival, where they were joined by a miller, a
blacksmith, and a tailor all looking for a new place to settle and
ply their trades. And where Talon won an emerald ring in an
all-night game of Shah from the Bishop of Tours, and bought a bolt
of forest green silk and a baby blanket of finely woven indigo
wool, his gifts for Lara and their baby, and himself. The closer