Page 3 of The Captive Knight
Hugo nodded, still groggy with sleep. As he rose from his makeshift bed of dried hay she was once again struck by how much he’d grown. Hugo’s mind was like a child’s, but his body was no longer so. Years ago, she’d rescued Hugo from the brutal, teasing wrath of the village boys and brought him into the castle service. If those boys could see him now, they wouldn’t dare tie the brawny orphan to a Maypole and singe him with glowing ends of tinder.
She handed Hugo a wooden platter and pointed to what she wanted. The boy loaded a large piece of cold meat, a loaf of trencher bread, the ashen carcass of a well-cooked duck, and a jug of hippocras and another of water onto the tray. She dipped the wick of her tallow candle into the embers in one of the fireplaces and then, with her dogs and Hugo in tow, she left the warm kitchen.
The dogs jumped and whined, the scent of food in their nostrils. Aliénor clicked her tongue until they were silenced and then shredded some of the duck to distract them while she and Hugo slipped away and passed through the door of the northwest tower. Once inside, she saw a faint glow at the bottom of the spiral staircase.
She shielded her candle from eddies of wind and descended, the nape of her neck prickling. It was here where she and her mother had housed and tended many victims of the plague during the last wave of sickness, back when they thought it would help to keep the suffering away from the healthy. But the villagers had fallen like sheaves of wheat both here and in the fields, and her two older brothers had died from the plague in these rooms. Though the last of the victims had died six years before, imprinted in the air was a miasma of suffering.
A ghostly voice floated up the stairs, startling her. “Who goes there?”
“The daughter of the house,” she said, bracing herself. “I’ve brought food for the prisoner.”
She rounded the last curve to face the guard at the doorway of the cell. His sword was sheathed, but his hand lay on the hilt.
He released his weapon as he saw her. “My lord ordered that no one is to see the prisoner.”
“But certainly he needs to eat, Sir Rudel.”
The guard swayed a bit, as if he had drunk too much wine from the freshly tapped cask at dinner. “My lord ordered—”
“My father is not himself today,” she interrupted. “Surely you understand? In the excitement of victory, he neglected common courtesy—”
“He told me not to feed him.”
She feigned surprise, though she too had heard her father’s angry orders. Most of the castle had, since he’d roared them across the trestle tables when one of his vassals, Sir Rostand, had requested permission to tend to the prisoner’s welfare. Behind the screens where she had tended the wounded men, Aliénor couldn’t coax any of them into divulging what had happened at Castétis, but their censure and disapproval of her father was palpable.
“Rudel,” she said, “you’ve been my father’s vassal for many years. Surely you recognize this rage will pass, like every other.”
“So will my life, if I defy his orders.”
“Do you prefer to be punished by my father’s hand or to die by the sword of the Prince of Wales?”
The guard quieted. Her father was a staunch supporter of the French king, but the wounded thief was a vassal of the English Prince of Wales. She thought it highly unlikely that a mighty prince, heir to the English throne, would turn his face away from more weighty matters to concern himself in the fate of a single knight in the wilds of Gascony. But considering her father’s rage, she figured she needed all the leverage she could get to convince Rudel to grant her access.
She leaned in and placed her free hand on his arm. “No need to tell my father I was here, of course,” she said. “Best for both of us, I think.”
“But if St. Simon harms you—”
“The knight is hardly in any condition to attack. Besides, Hugo is here.”
She gestured into the gloom behind her. The guard looked at the looming boy-man and his laden tray.
“And from what little I saw,” she added, pressing her advantage, “the knight may already be dead.”
The guard frowned. With some reluctance, he pulled out the iron key hanging around his neck. He fumbled with it until it scraped into the lock. Yanking the door wide, he took the tallow candle from Aliénor’s hand, thrust it into the small room, and glanced about as he gripped his sword.
She saw a body lying motionless against the far wall. Approaching the knight, she sank to her knees an arm’s length away. He was a large man, broader of shoulder and longer of limb than she had noticed when he’d been slumped on his horse in the courtyard. He still wore his chain mail and armor plates at his elbows and knees, but his baldric and all its attached weapons had been removed. Congealed blood covered his features.
She reached out to touch his face, biting her lip in fear it would be cold and lifeless under her hand.
He moved so fast she barely became aware of the motion until her fingers flared out at the pain of his grip.
“Call off your guards, woman, or I shall shatter every bone in your wrist.”
