Elmwood #2
He thought then of Hilde’s picture. Not the one of him naked, but the other—the one of him and Rollo.
That happy man, beloved of his dog, smiling.
From the moment he had seen that picture, he should have pursued it.
He should have done everything within his power to ensure that he could be that man, feeding treats to his beautiful little dog, while Hilde looked on and saw him for who he truly was.
His fear, his shame; it was all such a colossal waste.
“Elmwood?” said Winthrop.
Elmwood loved her far more than he hated himself. He loved her more than he hated his Charm.
“Elmwood!”
Elmwood realized that he had an immense smile spreading across his face. It must have looked quite demented, because Winthrop was grimacing at him.
“I’m here,” he said, clapping a hand on Winthrop’s shoulder.
“Then…what are we going to do?”
Elmwood’s smile widened further.
“I, for one, am going to go and do something romantic and stupid.”
Croftholde looked surprisingly serene when he arrived. As Elmwood approached the house, Cook came darting out of the kitchen door.
“You were supposed to flee,” she scolded him.
“I’ve come to help Hilde. Has her plan with the wine worked?”
Cook shook her head, worrying her apron in her hands.
“I’m afraid he’s going to hurt her.”
“Your Ed has gone to the village for help, and I have a plan. Where are they?”
“In the Hall, but…”
“Thank you.”
It was very simple to get caught. Brumdorf was glowering just outside the door, and an unpleasant grin broke across his face as Elmwood approached.
“Should have stayed in the cupboard,” he said, and then he grabbed Elmwood and dragged him inside.
Even with Brumdorf manhandling him, Elmwood experienced a surge of frantic joy at seeing Hilde.
Significantly less joyful was the fact that the Harrier had his filthy hands all over her and appeared to be hurting her, as Cook had feared.
Tears were running down her face, and Elmwood’s resolve deepened a hundredfold.
“Elmwood,” she called, her voice cracking. Then she winced as the Harrier tightened his grip on her throat.
The Harrier smiled at Elmwood.
“Have you come to watch me work? I know you’re depraved, but this seems like a bit much even for you, don’t you think?”
“I came to stop you,” said Elmwood.
The Harrier chuckled.
“You’ve fucked that up nicely,” he said. “Typical.”
“Are you hurt, Hilde?” Elmwood said.
“Not nearly so badly as my brother is going to hurt you when I tell him you’ve been fucking his precious wife.” Elmwood could see the Harrier’s huge fingers digging into her skin.
Elmwood wished he could reassure her somehow. He needed some way to tell her that he had a plan, for he could see from the shattered wineglasses that hers had failed.
“He may be a na?ve fool,” the Harrier continued, “but he is my blood. My only blood. I will not suffer to see him disgraced by a no-account farm wench who would seduce him into marriage then play the whore to a traitorous Charmer.”
Hilde laughed then, surprising them all, the sound of it brittle and cold.
“You keep saying that I seduced him, and I am tired of hearing it,” she said.
“I thought it of myself for far too long. But the truth is that Thorgoode was lonely. He feared and despised you and Germain, and he took me to bed and then to marriage to ease that loneliness. I let him, because I was afraid of what might become of me and my sister if I did not. I built a life, year after year, upon a scaffolding of half truths and the need for companionship and the little kindnesses that were enough to sustain us. But I was never truly happy.”
“Happiness,” scoffed the Harrier, “is not for the likes of you.”
“That isn’t for you to decide!”
“You think you’ve found happiness with him?” The Harrier jerked Hilde a little in Elmwood’s direction.
She finally looked at Elmwood, her dark eyes almost overwhelming him with all the emotion they held.
“Yes,” she said.
“Hmm. Then this is going to be a real tragedy, isn’t it?” said the Harrier. He tightened his grip around Hilde’s throat. Her hands came up to claw at his, but there was little she could do. Elmwood strained against Brumdorf’s hold, but it was no good.
“If you kill her, you’ll be banished same as me, Engelbrooke. She’s a lady in the eyes of the law. You know very well that the only person the Relancians are itching to burn more than me is you.”
“Thank you for your concern, but an awful lot can happen to a person before they die,” said the Harrier. “And rather a lot can happen after as well. You know that better than anyone.”
Elmwood’s blood ran cold. This was not part of his plan.
“Would you bring her back, I wonder?” said the Harrier.
“No,” said Elmwood quietly. “I would not, and you would burn for her death.”
“Well, perhaps I won’t kill her, then. Perhaps I’ll let Thorgoode do it. No court would banish a man for punishing his cheating wife.”
“Thorgoode would never hurt me,” said Hilde, voice strained, but there was a certainty in it that calmed Elmwood. He just needed to get things moving back toward his plan, and it would all come right.
“That’s because he is his brother’s superior in every way,” said Elmwood, forcing his face into a smirk. “Wouldn’t you agree, Lord Rat Piss?”
The Harrier’s jaw flexed. Elmwood said a prayer to all the old gods and saints and anyone else who might listen that this would work.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of your fucking mouth,” the Harrier shouted, raising his voice for the first time since Elmwood had arrived. Good.
His satisfaction was short-lived, as Brumdorf, clearly emboldened by his master’s visible rage, tossed Elmwood against the nearest wall as if he weighed no more than a sack of onions.
Thankfully, Elmwood’s shoulder took the brunt of the impact, rather than his hip, which hurt badly enough as it was.
He managed to slide down the wall without too much damage being done, then hauled himself up to lean against it, looking back at the Harrier and Hilde. Hilde’s eyes were wide.
“You know you’d have to lock me up to shut me up,” he said, oh so carefully. “It would have to be a bit more secure than that wardrobe, though, and it’s not as though this place has a dungeon.”
“As a matter of fact, it does!” the Harrier snarled, spittle flying from his lips.
“This was the stronghold of the Croft family for over a thousand years, which you would know if you’d bothered to learn anything about your country and its history!
I think I’ll let you rot in it while I await my brother and we determine how to punish your whore.
Won’t that be fun for you to think about in the dark? ”
He gave Hilde a shake.
“Give me your chatelaine,” the Harrier snarled.
Hilde did as she was told. She glanced up at Elmwood as the Harrier examined the keys, her eyes wide with fear. Elmwood smiled at her. Then he winked, for good measure.
Her brow wrinkled at him as the Harrier tossed the keys to Brumdorf.
“Go through the yard and around the corner by the gatehouse. There’s a door set into the exterior wall. Put him down there and lock him in!”
“You’re going to regret this,” said Elmwood. He hoped it would sound like an empty threat to the Harrier, but he willed Hilde to understand it for the promise it was.
Then Brumdorf was dragging him away, down the corridor and out of the house and to the root cellar.
It was pitch-dark down in the cellar. Elmwood fumbled slowly down the stairs, then felt his way along the shelf to where he remembered Hilde keeping her lantern. His hands found it, along with the little tinderbox beside it. Bless Hilde and her incessant preparedness.
He held the lantern aloft.
Lord Thorgoode Croft lay on the stone floor of the cellar, wrapped about with a blanket, like a man taking a nap in an unlikely place rather than a corpse. Elmwood approached him slowly. He still looked fresh. Evidently, Hilde’s Charm had not yet worn off.
Elmwood knelt beside him, setting the lantern on the ground, then slid to the side to sit upon the stones. His heart was pounding, his hands were shaking, and in his ears rose the sounds of screaming horses and men.
He breathed through it. He deliberately moved his thoughts to Hilde instead. He thought of her studying him in the candlelight, charcoal scratching on paper. He thought of how she had trusted him and cared for him.
There was only one thing he could do to help her now.
So he reached out his hands and placed them on her husband’s corpse.
He pushed at death, and it gave way to him, opening the door for something else to pour back in.
It was never the people who died peacefully in their beds at the end of a long life who needed resurrecting.
No, it was always some wretch pulled untimely from their mortal coil.
Whether their death was from the violence of another person’s act or the violence of a body succumbing to illness or accident, it was all violence. It left its indelible mark.
So, when Elmwood used his Charm upon Lord Croft, down in the dim of the root cellar, he did so with very low expectations.
His hope was that the man would be compulsive but not raging, and that he could somehow turn that compulsion toward action on Hilde’s behalf.
Even if the man was largely insensible, surely his presence alone would provide her with some sort of protection from the Harrier.
The great hulking mountain of a man twitched once like someone waking after a dream of falling, sat up, and said, in a voice that could only be described as booming, “Where the fuck is this?”
“Uhhh…” stammered Elmwood.
“Who are you? Where is my dinner? I am hungry enough to eat an entire boar myself, tail and trotters!”
Elmwood studied the man, marveling at how…normal he seemed. What was happening?
“My name is Elmwood,” he stammered.
“Elmwood! Why are we in a hole?”
“It’s Croftholde’s root cellar. We are locked inside it.”
He watched Lord Croft think this through, wondering if his surprising sentience would crack.
“Are you quite well, Lord Croft?” he asked.
“What? Fine as a fish, but I think I’m late for supper with my wife, and she’s not a woman you want to keep waiting!”
For some reason, that was what brought the full weight of what Elmwood had done to bear. This man’s wife. Hilde. Whom Elmwood was in love with, and who even now was being menaced by the Harrier.
“Indeed,” he said, carefully. “You have been…away for a long while, Lord Croft. Your wife has managed as best as she could in your absence, but she has need of you now. We must go to her, with all haste.”
“Away?” said Lord Croft. His brow crinkled, and he rubbed absently at his chest. Would he remember dying? Elmwood rather hoped not, so he tried to divert him.
“Yes, and we must find some way to break out of this cellar. Have you any ideas?”
“Never been locked in my own cellar before. At least not that I remember. If only I could get something to eat, this fog in my mind would clear!” Lord Croft said, moving his hand to rub at his left arm.
Well, the man hadn’t eaten in a long time, after all. Elmwood looked around and spotted a crate of sandy soil that had a yellow carrot peeking up out of it. He pulled out the carrot, dusted the dirt off it as best he could, and handed it to Lord Croft.
Lord Croft grinned at it, then ate—nay, devoured—it in two bites.
“Excellent carrot!” he proclaimed. He then set to digging about in the crate, and inhaled five more carrots in quick succession. “If only they were roasted, and we had some venison to accompany them!”
Then Elmwood realized that the cellar had grown brighter. He turned toward the stairs, and there, gaping at Lord Croft as if she were looking at a ghost, was Hilde’s maidservant.
“Francie!” bellowed Lord Croft. “Tell Cook I want my supper!”
Lord Croft strode across the yard as if he’d returned from an afternoon at a public house rather than from the dead. Elmwood and Francie scurried after him.
“How did you get the keys?” Elmwood asked her. She was staring at Lord Croft, wide-eyed.
“Cook offered His Grace’s man a drink. He’s stashed behind the woodpile.”
Elmwood almost laughed.
“Well, I’m glad the wine worked on someone, even if it wasn’t the Harrier.”
“Lord Croft…is he…” Francie began, but was cut off.
“You, Elmwood!” called Lord Croft, pausing in the entrance of his house. “I’ve still no idea why you’re here, but come meet my wife and have some dinner and we can sort it out!”
Elmwood shrugged helplessly at Francie, then joined Lord Croft.
“You’ve a bad leg,” said Lord Croft. “Fought in the war, did you?” He draped a heavy arm around Elmwood’s shoulders and hauled him into the house.
“You probably know my brother, then. The Western Harrier. I pity anyone under his command, I’ll tell you that!
But then, I pity any fool who goes for a soldier; no offense meant, of course.
The food must be terrible at the front. I wonder what Cook has made tonight!
” It was very strange, but Elmwood realized that he liked Lord Croft, which he had not at all expected.
He found himself understanding how Hilde, with all her strength of will, had been pulled into the tide of his affable momentum.
But like him or not, Elmwood still had to throw him to the birds of prey. The Harrier awaited his brother, and Elmwood saw no reason to keep him waiting.