Page 104 of The Knight's Pledge
“Countess, we are in the middle of an execution,” Henry advised. “I’m not at all certain your claims of—”
“Again, forgive my interruption, Henry—I mean no disrespect to your court. But in the interest of the peace and good relations between England and Greece, I respectfully request that any punishment decided as a result of thiswoman’stestimony be postponed.” The woman raised her arm and handed a roll of parchment to the nearest guard. Elpis flicked her finger toward the box.“The warrant.”
Henry’s guard took the parchment and handed it up to the king, who unfurled it at once. After a moment, he raised his surprised countenance to once more face the Greek woman, more splendidly outfitted thanhis own queen.
“My father,” Elpis announced, “was a surgeon in Constantinople when I was born. He had taken into his employ a sly army deserter who showed remarkable aptitude for learning the intricacies of the operations he practiced on the wounded. That young Englishman was a commoner, given to the army in payment of his father’s debts. His name was Vaughn Hargrave.”
“No!” Caris gasped from behind the king. “That is a lie! My husband never knew your family!”
“Oh, but he did,” Elpis assured the box. “He lived in my father’s home with my mother and my sister and myself. You knew them too, did you not,LadyCaris? Quite elevated in station now, since your time behind the taverns on Mystras.”
“I demand you cut this woman down at once!” Caris screeched. She gasped, her thin chest heaving. “For slandering my name and that of my late husband! A baron! Am I not your loyal subject, Your Grace?”
“You are not!” Elpis cried out stridently, her accented voice cutting through the warm spring air like the sharpest battle sword. “The king holds the proof in his own hand! I never dreamed I would have my revenge, and now that it is before me, I will have it to the fullest measure!”
The very budding leaves seemed to tremble with the royal woman’s rage and some foreign emotion in Effie’s stomach stirred.
“Vaughn Hargrave was not content with his role of apprentice,” Elpis continued. “And his depravity and hunger for cruelty knew no bounds. My father was a pious man, and when he discovered Hargrave using his pet, Caris, to bring him subjects from the village—foreigners, soldiers who would never be missed—so that he could perform his experiments in secret, he turned him out into the street and told him to follow the returning English company, led by Lord Tenred Annesley, back to England for his just punishmentfor desertion.”
Effie’s gaze flew at once to her father. Tenred Annesley was her grandfather!
“But Vaughn Hargrave couldn’t accept that, having grown so used to his new position in society,” Elpis said. “And neither could Caris. She was infuriated that her benefactor was being sent away, and so the night the company left, she stole into our home and took my sister, Chordileia, who was not yet four years old.”
“Cordelia?” Thomas called out from the gallows.“My Cordelia?”
Elpis turned and, for the first time, addressed Thomas. “Yes, Lord Annesley, I believe they are one and the same. Caris was a whore on Mystras, popular for being unable to conceive regardless of how many men she knew—she couldn’t carry a child of her own. I am both astounded and thankful that Caris was so brazen—or so stupid—to have not bothered to change my sister’s name after she abducted her. As if any of us would have ever stopped searching for word of her whereabouts.”
Elpis looked back to the king. “The paper you now hold charges Vaughn Hargrave and the common Greek subject, Caris, with kidnapping of a royal member and mutilation adverse to Christian doctrine. They’ve been wanted in Greece for more than two score years, Your Grace. If you will allow me to return her for her judgement, the prizes on their heads belong to theEnglish Crown.”
“The letter said my father and Vaughn Hargrave fought together,” Thomas called out, interrupting the countess’s speech with his desperate words. “That they were in Constantinople, and that he saved my father’s life. That he was made an officer.”
“They were in Constantinople,” Elpis allowed. “But your father wouldn’t have sat at a table with Vaughn Hargrave. Tenred Annesley was a respected lord, and the last thing he would have done was entrusted his most treasured possessions—you, Thomas, and his beloved Darlyrede—to a depraved villain such as Hargrave. The letter granting him your guardianship as well as your father’s estate was a forgery, I’m quite certain. It’s likely that it was he who caused your parents’ deaths, my dear.”
The king looked very grave. “I expect I still retain the decree,” Henry said.
Then, for the first time, Effie allowed the little ray of hope pecking at her heart to squeeze through.
There was a scuffle behind the king, and a guard seized hold of Caris Hargrave while another held aloft a blade. “She would have harmedherself, lord.”
The king disregarded the weak and helpless woman, now in the grips of two of his own guards. “If this writ is genuine,” Henry advised Elpis with a frown, “and all you say is true, Countess, then Darlyrede House never left the possession of Thomas Annesleyin the first.”
“And Cordelia Hargrave, as she was known,” Elpis advised, “was never an English subject. She was Greek nobility.” She looked past the king to where Caris hung limp, her dark eyes glaring, her chest still heaving. “Caris is my prisoner, and I would return her to my country to receive her just punishment.”
Effie looked now to Lucan, and found that he was already watching her.
“She’s nothing to me,” Effie whispered, her lips numb. “Caris. Vaughn Hargrave. They are nothing to me. Evil strangers. Their blood runs not in my veins.”
“Not a drop,” Lucan confirmed as he took her into his arms, and she needed that strength, that firm embrace to ground her while her mind whirled with the possibility of a new reality. But then he braced his hands on her shoulders and held heraway from him.
“Get down,” he commanded.
“What?”
“Hurry.” He helped her from the bench and then strode past the gallows, pulling Effie by the hand. “Undo that man at once,” he commanded the hangman as he marched toward the golden litter and the woman cladin black lace.
Effie looked up just in time to see the hangman lift the corner of his mask, and James Montrose gave her a cheeky wink. “As you wish, lord.”
There was no time for shock, as Elpis’s guards were immediately alert to their approach, but the king waved a hand.
