Chapter Six #2
Gryffyn ignored her suggestion, at least outwardly.
Inside, however, his distorted mind was working furiously.
He was like a caged beast, pacing around and knocking over furniture, so much so that he awoke Izlyn.
When the girl rubbed her eyes sleepily and then saw her brother, she began to weep. Gryffyn looked at the girl, infuriated.
“And you!” he barked, pointing a finger at her. “Tell me that I have your support or I shall punish you severely!”
Chrystobel raced to her sister’s side, falling onto the bed and throwing her arms around the girl. “You do not have time for her,” she insisted, her voice rising with panic. “Gryffyn, you must leave now. If they find you, they will kill you!”
Gryffyn marched over to the bed and reached out, grabbing Chrystobel by her hair.
As she cried out in pain, he yanked her away from Izlyn and onto the floor.
On her knees before her brother, his fingers brutally entwined in her hair, she gasped when he yanked her head upwards so that she was gazing into his menacing face.
Gryffyn yanked her hair again just because he liked to hear her yelp.
The sounds of pain always gave him pleasure.
“You are loyal to him, aren’t you?” he hissed.
Chrystobel was gasping and weeping with pain. “Nay!” she cried.
“Admit it!”
“Nay!” she wept. “Please, Gryffyn, let me go!”
Gryffyn didn’t comply. He held her hair tightly, his wretched mind mulling over a variety of scenarios involving his sister and the enemy knight.
True, she had never shown any real excitement for marrying the Saesneg.
In fact, she had been openly reluctant to do so.
She was a bigger pawn in this situation than any of them.
Therefore, Gryffyn eased his stance slightly…
but only slightly. At the moment, he was concocting a scheme that would very much involve his sister.
He needed her to save him. He needed her to save them all.
There was a very simply way to put an end to the Saesneg reign of Nether.
“Then you will prove your loyalty,” he rumbled, digging into his leather vest and producing a small, sharp dagger.
When Chrystobel cried out, terrified he was going to use it on her, he yanked her hair again to both control and still her.
“When your husband comes to share your bed, you will use this dagger on him. When the man least expects it, thrust it into his back and kill him. Do you understand?”
Chrystobel was weeping uncontrollably but she nodded.
Gryffyn yanked her hair one last time as he thrust the dirk at her, placing it into her shaking hands.
Then he let go of her hair and watched her fall to the floor.
His gaze, furious only moments before, was now strangely impassive as he looked at his sister huddled in a terrified heap.
“It is your duty as a Welshman to kill the English vermin,” he told her.
“If you do not, then I will know you are a traitor and I will kill you the first chance I get. Once you are dead, I will kill Izlyn and Father as well. I will leave no one in this family alive, so you hold everyone’s lives in your hand.
Kill your husband or I will kill you. Is this in any way unclear? ”
Sobbing, Chrystobel nodded her head. “It… it ’tis.”
Gryffyn felt very powerful at that moment, pleased with his plan to kill de Poyer. As usual, he would have someone else do his dirty work for him. This time, it would be his sister.
“Good,” he grunted. “I will be down in the storage vaults. You are correct. It is the best place to hide. I will await word of your success.”
He meant it as a threat and she took it as one.
Chrystobel remained in a ball on the floor, her face against the wooden planks, hearing Gryffyn as he stomped to her chamber door and swiftly quit the chamber.
Like a violent storm, Gryffyn had swept along the land, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake.
But the moment he vacated, the sudden silence was both comforting and eerie.
Once he was gone, Chrystobel jumped up and ran to the door, throwing the iron bolt so that he could not come back inside.
Then she collapsed against the door, weeping and frightened.
All she’d ever known from the man was terror, since she had been a small girl.
He continued to put the fear of the devil in her, a primal instinct that had been instilled in her long ago.
It therefore took her several moments before she was able to calm sufficiently.
Still sniffling, she pushed away from the door and made her way back to Izlyn, who had lain back down in the bed and pulled the coverlets fearfully over her head.
The little girl was trembling, too, and Chrystobel lay down next to her, snuggling with the child to comfort her.
All the while, Chrystobel was very torn with the course her life would take over the next few hours.
She was terrified of Gryffyn, enough so that she was actually considering doing his bidding.
She knew her brother well enough to know he meant what he said. He would kill them all should she fail.
But in the next breath, her new husband had sworn to protect her.
She didn’t know the man and she didn’t yet trust his word – should she believe him?
Or should she do her brother’s will simply to keep her family alive?
Her entire life had been filled with these moments, threats of murder from a man who delighted in spreading panic.
She was so very sick of the fear, so perhaps it was time to do something about it.
The dirk was still in her hand and she opened her palm to look at it, gleaming dully in the weak firelight.
Perhaps it was time to take a leap of faith to save her father and her sister, to trust a man she had only known a matter of hours.
She was coming to feel as if Keller de Poyer was her only hope, an English enemy who had sworn to defend her.
Nay, she could no longer subject herself and her family to Gryffyn’s tyranny because to do so, ultimately, would only cause their deaths.
This she knew as certainly as she lived and breathed.
Someday, someway, Gryffyn would kill them all.
It was time to take a stand.
*
It was an hour or two before dawn by the time Keller made his way back to Chrystobel’s chamber.
Over six hours of searching had failed to produce Gryffyn, so he put his men on shifts to watch over the Welsh inhabitants of Nether.
Half went to bed while the other half remained awake and vigilant, guarding the unhappy Welsh.
The more the minutes passed, the more enraged he was about Gryffyn’s absence.
He was coming to think that the man had fled the castle, which would have been the right thing to do.
Gryffyn was more intelligent than he gave him credit for if that was the case, and as Keller made his way up to Chrystobel’s chamber, he struggled to push aside thoughts of the man.
He didn’t want to carry that poison over into the lady’s chamber.
He didn’t want that vile man on his mind when he looked at her.
The keep was dark and quiet at this hour as he reached the second floor landing. There were two chambers on this floor and he went to the chamber on the left, the one that overlooked the southern portion of the bailey. Lifting the latch, he gave a shove but the door was bolted. He knocked softly.
It took a moment for him to hear movement. He could hear feet on the floor, coming closer. Chrystobel’s voice hissed at him from the other side of the panel.
“Who comes?” she demanded.
“It is your husband, Lady de Poyer.”
He could hear the iron bolt being thrown, grating against the wood.
The door opened slightly, but only enough to allow Chrystobel out.
Keller was forced to step back as she came onto the landing, closing the chamber door behind her.
He couldn’t help but notice that she was in a sleeping shift with a heavy shawl draped around her shoulders.
A sleeping shift made him think of a bed, and a bed made him think of consummating their marriage.
She also smelled of flowers, something he found quite alluring.
He was still dwelling on the scent of violets when she began to speak, jolting him out of his somewhat lustful thoughts.
“Izlyn is asleep and I did not wish to wake her with our conversation,” she whispered. “I must speak with you.”
Keller could sense her grim mood. “How may I be of service?”
Chrystobel looked up at him, her brown eyes deep and bottomless.
It was evident that there was much on her mind, a thousand questions without adequate answers.
He was coming to see that the woman had no ability to hide her emotions.
They were written all over her face. After a moment, she sighed faintly.
“Did you find my brother?” she asked.
“Nay.”
She grunted softly. “Nor will you, I suppose,” she muttered. “My lord, I must ask you something and I would beg you to be truthful.”
“I always am.”
She was very hesitant and the words came out in spurts.
“You… you are a stranger here,” she said nervously.
“I have only known you a few hours, yet you are my husband. I do not know you as a man of character or honor yet. I can only assume such things because of your rank. You said earlier that Gryffyn’s violence towards us would be no more and I very much hope…
that is to say, I want to believe you. But there are things you do not know. ”
Keller took her statement very seriously.
He crossed his big arms, bracing his legs apart as he settled in for the conversation.
“I suspect there is a great deal I do not know about this place and about you,” he said.
“But the question is whether or not you intend to tell me, or if you intend on keeping secrets.”