Knight Triumphant. Heather Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ by war and death. Perhaps one day you will marry again.”

      “No.”

      “You will be expected to marry again, and with your brother as your guardian, you will have a choice. You don’t see it now, but there can be happiness in your future. You mustn’t stay here. This man could do many things. Imprison you in misery. Barter with the powers in England for your life. For your safety, your honor—your mind!—you must be away from here. What can be done to a noblewoman held prisoner can be far worse than death. Look what King Edward has done to the women of the Scots.”

      Igrainia thought with unease of how Robert Bruce’s sister, Mary, and the young Countess of Buchan, who had rushed to Robert Bruce’s coronation, had been punished by the king; caged outside the castle walls of Berwick and Roxburgh, as if they were rare animals on display. Day after day they spent in their wooden prisons. The same punishment had first been ordered for Bruce’s twelve-year-old daughter, Marjorie, but thankfully, enough men around the king thought that such a sentence upon a child was too savage, and so the girl had been sent to a monastery. The Bruce’s wife, daughter of an English earl, was kept in strict captivity in the manor of Burstwick-in-Holderness.

      Igrainia’s own father had been an earl; her brother was an earl. But he was young and did not hold the kind of power yet that swayed kings. If she was captured by the Scots and made into an example of their retaliation, she could face dire consequences indeed.

      “What if you’re wrong?” she asked softly. “What if I am gone, and in his fury, he executes even you.”

      “Few churchmen have met an axe, even in the vengeance and brutality of what has gone by.”

      “The others . . .”

      “He has not killed the men in your escort who surrendered to him.”

      “He has lain ill and unconscious most of the time he has been here.”

      Father MacKinley shook his head. “He gave orders before he sat with his wife that none were to be killed unless they refused to yield. Death has stricken Langley hard enough. He does not take pleasure in bloodshed, as do some. Igrainia, it is you I fear for. I beg of you, leave here.”

      “How can I do so? We can muster no escort, and even most of the women are ill. I cannot take Jennie, not when she is still so important here. And I cannot go with Sir Robert Neville who is still so ill, yet must be taken quickly from here. He is my husband’s kinsman and surely in great danger among the Scots.”

      Father MacKinley looked at her a moment and then smiled slowly. “No, you cannot go with Sir Robert, for precisely those reasons. And you mustn’t fear for him. Sir Robert has already been taken south. He and his squire slipped out this morning through the tunnel at the end of the crypt.”

      Igrainia gasped. “I wasn’t even informed!”

      “I thought it best to make his escape at the first moment I could, and not because I didn’t trust your judgment or want your counsel. The opportunity arose this morning and I had to take it. The outlaw Scots were busy in the courtyard, except for the man guarding Eric Graham and the door to the master’s chamber. No one knows that he has gone, as yet. And we must get you away in the same fashion. We cannot have the gates open, the drawbridge dropped. Soon, as soon as you can make a hasty preparation. You will go as a poor woman, seeking peace and prayer on a pilgrimage to shrines in the south. I beg of you, Igrainia. I have prayed on this matter myself. The rest of the people here will fare well. You might be of value to the Scots, and therefore, a value for them to keep in jeopardy. I have honestly pondered this long and hard as I prayed. I know that you must go. And I hope that God has given me his wisdom.”

      In the first days when the fever broke, Eric was too weak to do more than lie in his bed, and listen.

      He listened carefully.

      Though his limbs seemed worn and painful, it was the pain of knowing all that he had lost which was the worst. His child, his wife. There were times when it did not seem worth the effort to live, to gain strength again.

      But with the death of love came the birth of an idea, a fierce preoccupation. He would regain his strength and rise from the bed, for a long fight remained ahead. He would rise, because he would win.

      Before they could realize that he had regained his strength, he would do so. He knew that many of his men had failed to fall to the disease because they came to the sickroom; indeed one of his own followers was in a chair at all times. The priest came and went. Women from the castle served him, but they were watched. He knew the one voice that whispered often with the others; the voice of the servant who had said they must let him die. He was grateful that he rode with so many who were wary, and careful, lest his enemies slip poison into the brews they gave him to bring him back to strength.

      He knew so much, because he lay there carefully, eyes closed.

      And listened.

      He had lain abed more than two weeks. Margot had died the day he had fallen.

      Sir Robert Neville, stricken kin of the late lord of Langley, had been spirited away by the priest who was not afraid.

      And the lady of Langley was gone as well.

      He understood the mind of the young priest, and he admired him, as he admired the fact that the man himself did not run. He wondered if he had been saved because of the man’s reverence to God, or because his men remained in the castle and might slaughter everyone if he were to die, and they were left without direction. He thought, though, that the priest had judged them, and knew that they would not wantonly kill.

      Then, again, there was the fact that Langley had long stood as a bastion in the borderlands, and loyalties here had wavered frequently. The late lord had been a product of both England and Scotland. His mother had been Celtic to the core, and in the past, it had been as if Langley stood apart. The great gates and drawbridge had been lowered at the command of those serving the king, but Pembroke’s army had not been far away, and if the wrath of that army had been turned from the pursuit of Robert Bruce to the total subjugation of Langley, the castle and its people would have most likely suffered a bitter defeat. Sad though it might be, the people in the lowlands had good reason to bow before Edward of England before bending a knee to Robert Bruce.

      He lay in the master chamber, in the same bed where Margot had lain. And often, the pain of her loss and his innocent sweet child Aileen lay on his heart so heavily that not even his anger, grief and hatred could stir him. But there were moments when he was alone in the room, and remembered his vow to himself that he would live. And in those moments, he began to move. To work his muscles. The priest sometimes came to watch over him, but he had passed the stage of death, and there were those who needed the priest’s ministrations so much more. His men, he knew, guarded the door, and came in with the maidservants when they tended to him. But as the days passed, he began to have hours alone, and in those hours, he began to work his weakened muscles. His hands first, because in the days following the worst of the fevers and the nightmares and the dreams and illusions, not even his fingers wanted to bend at the command of his mind. Bit by bit, he struggled to create a grip, then to raise his arms, to sit up, and then to stand, and finally to walk. He forced himself to eat, for he knew that he had to do so, and he knew, as well, that his own people watched over the kitchen. He kept to the bed until he had gained a certain sense of power, then he rose, and called to Peter MacDonald to help him; he needed water, a long bath in hot, soothing water. In all the days when he had tossed and turned, he had known that he still bore remnants of the blood and mud of battle, and the sweat of sickness. He was eager to feel clean again.

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