Chapter Eight #8
They ate and drank, laughed and talked, until there was nothing left. It had been a fine evening. As the remains were being cleared from the table, three soldiers entered the front door of the castle, dripping wet from the terrible elements outside. They sought out their liege.
The soldier in the lead bowed quickly. “My lord, the captive wishes to speak with you.”
Christopher glanced at David. “Well and good for him that he does,” he muttered, then looked to his soldiers. “I shall come shortly.”
The knights, all of them, quit the hall as the soldiers exited back out into the vicious weather.
Dustin, alone at the table, looked after them and felt a bit lost all of a sudden.
The abrupt silence was disorienting. She watched as David ordered Christopher’s armor brought forth once more, and personally helped his brother don the metal plating.
As they had been doing it all their lives, they worked as a team to adeptly dress in their protection.
When Christopher finished strapping on a piece of plate armor over his forearm, he turned, almost as an afterthought, to his wife still at the table.
“I will not be long,” he said confidently.
She nodded in response, watching as he and his men quit the castle. Beyond the door, the lightning flashed and the rain came down in buckets, yet it was eerily quiet in the grand hall.
Dustin sighed. When it had just been her and her mother, the grand hall was always this quiet and she was very aware of the difference before and after Christopher had come.
She had come to enjoy the company of him and his men very much, and alone in the hall, she found the loneliness oppressive.
As much as she had loved her mother, she felt it almost a sacrilege to admit that she liked life at Lioncross better now since the baron had arrived.
Even with everything that had happened, the deaths and fights and incidents, Christopher had somehow breathed life into the dying keep.
Dustin was glad she hadn’t gone to Nottingham, and glad circumstances had prevented her from leaving.
Had she gone, she would have never come to know her husband and would have probably spent a good deal of time resenting him for marrying her and taking her keep.
Another clap of thunder sounded loud overhead and Dustin glanced up as if she could see it.
With another sigh, she left the hall and went to her mother’s small solar.
There was a small fire in the hearth and Dustin moved for the windows, paneled with rare and expensive glass, for they provided protection and an excellent view of the bailey where she could watch what was going on between her husband and his prisoner.
She was curious, for her father never kept prisoners, and she wanted to see what they were going to do with the fool who almost killed David.
*
The bailey had turned into a mucky, slippery lake as Christopher and his knights crossed it, heading for the wet, naked man near the eastern wall. Leeton and Jeffrey were already standing on either side of the man and Christopher could hear his wails as he approached.
He planted himself in front of the prisoner, spitting out the rainwater that had run into his mouth.
“I am here,” he said coldly. “What is it that you wish to tell me?”
The captive was truly miserable, his entire body was blue and his teeth were chattering violently. “Ev-v-v-erything, my lord. I only ask shelter and clothing.”
Christopher didn’t react for a moment. Then, he leaned close to the man’s face. “You had better be truthful, fool, or I will gut you on the spot.”
“I am, I a-a-a-am,” he insisted loudly. “I s-swear it on the bible.”
Christopher motioned for him to be released, stepping back as Leeton and Jeffrey untied the man and handed him over to David and Max.
He preceded his knights and the prisoner back into a side entrance of the castle that led into a row of small cubicles that were once used for confessionals as part of the original abbey structure.
It was a seldom used place, full of ghosts, with a dim and musty smell.
Although it wasn’t warm, it was dry and the man was given a rough woolen blanket to dry off with.
Christopher waited impatiently for the man to speak until he could stand it no longer. “Well?” he demanded.
The prisoner wiped his face dry, letting out a heavy sigh. “ ’Tis true what you have said, my lord, all of it,” he said quietly. “Sir Ralph sent us here to spy on you.”
“What were his orders?” Christopher asked calmly.
“To find out what we could and report back to him,” he answered.
Christopher studied the man a moment. “But you tried to kill me.”
“Aye, we did, but it was Roy’s idea,” the prisoner replied. “Sir Ralph never ordered us to kill you.”
As Christopher interrogated the prisoner, a small access door at the far end of the room quietly opened, avoiding detection.
A small silhouette stood still as stone, listening to the voices echo in the bowels of the old abbey.
But Christopher didn’t notice; he was too focused on gaining information.
He remained emotionless, standing with his legs braced firmly apart and his arms crossed. “Then what did you find out about me?”
The prisoner faltered a bit, eyeing Christopher. “Nothing much at all, my lord,” he replied. “It seems no one around here knows you very well. Not even your whore would tell us anything.”
Christopher showed a flash of puzzlement. “Whore? What whore?”
“The redhead,” came the quiet reply.
Christopher was horrified. He snapped, grabbing the man by the hair and pulling him up off the seat, slamming him heavily against the wall. “You killed her?”
The captive screamed and twisted. “I didn’t, Roy did!” he gasped. “He said she was your whore and we should kill her to keep her quiet.”
Christopher’s face reddened and he released the man, stepping back a moment to regain his composure. He was mad enough to kill but in a flash of reason, he knew if he killed the man, he might not know all of it. Gratification would have to wait.
“Bastards,” he hissed as he turned away. “You goddamn bastards.”
David, his handsome face tensed, stepped in because his brother seemed close to snapping.
“Who raped her?” he demanded. “And who killed her mother?”
The prisoner was scared, rubbing at his scalp where Christopher had yanked the hair right out of his head. “I killed her mother because I had to. Roy took care of the whore.”
“What do you mean you had to?” David demanded.
Christopher turned around and the man met his eyes, fear glazing his face. “Because she interrupted us as we were trying to get information from the whore,” he muttered. “She was going to run and tell, so I had to kill her.”
Christopher glared at the man. “If you call her a whore one more time, I will cut your throat,” he growled. “Now, answer his question. Who in the hell raped her?”
The captive wrapped the blanket about him tightly, cringing from the big knight. “Roy did,” he said fearfully. “She said she was untouched, but he took her anyway. Even when she screamed… I think he violated her in many ways. He took his dirk and did… things to her.”
Christopher’s nostrils flared a spilt-second, disgusted and sickened by the admission. He would take the information with him to his grave. Dustin would never, ever know the details. Almost beyond rage, he shook his head slowly.
“You stupid bastard,” he muttered. “She wasn’t a whore, she was a friend of my wife’s. Whatever possessed you to commit such a heinous crime against her?”
“We saw you leaving her house, my lord, alone,” he answered. “We thought she was your mistress.”
Christopher could see right through the fool’s simple train of thought. “And you thought to gain knowledge of me.” He shook his head at the irony, the stupidity, of it. “Tell me, then; have you sent any messages back to Sir Ralph?”
The fat man shook his head. “Nay, my lord. We have been here only a day or so.”
Christopher nodded at the answer, mulling over what he was going to do with the man now.
He felt a good deal of both relief and sorrow at having caught Rebecca’s killer and he knew that, somehow and some way, there had to be justice served.
Rebecca deserved that much and for her, for Dustin, he would make sure of it.
“What is your name?” he asked after a moment.
“Virgil,” the prisoner replied without hesitation.
As Christopher drilled the man for any more useful information he could come up with, the collection of knights had yet to notice the shadow far down the narrow hall.
The shadow had disappeared after the confession of Rebecca’s murder and was now back, moving like a wraith, silently and swiftly, and suddenly it was in their midst. Yelling at the top of her lungs and wielding a heavy pick axe she had retrieved inside the keep, Dustin nearly clipped David as she swung the battle-axe with all her might straight at Virgil’s head.
No one had a chance to react as the steel sang through the air and caught the prisoner half in the neck and half in the head, burying the blade deep. In a splash of blood and gore, the cubicle walls surrounding the man were colored crimson as his head slammed dully against the stone.
“You bloody bastard!” Dustin shrieked. “Consider that revenge for Rebecca!”
Christopher grabbed her tightly about the body but she struggled madly against him.
The prisoner, dead, was a gory sight with a pick axe buried in his face.
Dustin continued to rant and fight even as Christopher hauled her up in his arms, taking her back the way she had come.
It was a chaotic and heartbreaking scene.
David and the other knights, stunned at the ferocity of Lady de Lohr, watched Christopher walk away with his screaming burden. They exchanged apprehensive and shocked glances before returning their focus to the dead prisoner.
“He got what he deserved,” Max muttered.