Knight Triumphant. Heather Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ a long hallway and doors where the lady did not pause, but continued on to a smaller staircase. There, arrow slits lined the stone and she passed them all, coming to a large room filled with daylight. Makeshift beds littered the space, and light from a break in the ceiling seemed to cast a ray of hope over those who lay there. A priest moved among the beds, a young slender man in the black garment of his calling. He seemed surprised to see his lady at the doorway, and called to her with a frown. “Igrainia, you were to be away from all this!” he chastised.

      She stepped inside. “This is Sir Eric, Father MacKinley,” she said, and walked into the room, approaching a bed. Eric nodded to the priest and followed Igrainia.

      He fell to his knees by the pallet; he had found Margot at last. She seemed to be sleeping. No boils or poxes appeared to mar the beauty of her face. Yet as he touched her face, it was as if he touched flame. He saw where the boils had grown upon a collarbone and on her neck, and he was tempted to weep.

      He stared up at Igrainia of Langley. “Save her,” he commanded.

      She found water and brought it to Margot’s side and began to bathe her forehead.

      “Where is my daughter?” he asked.

      “Your daughter?” said the priest.

      “My child. Aileen. Young, blond hair, pale, soft as silk.”

      There was a silence from the priest.

      “My daughter, man! There were not so many young children among our number!”

      The priest nodded. “The little angel,” he murmured. “Sir, God has taken her.”

      He rose from his wife’s side, pain a blinding arrow through his heart. He approached the priest like a madman, tempted to take him by the throat and crush flesh and bone. Some sense delayed him from his purpose, and he paused before the man, who had not flinched. Eric stood before him, fists clenching and unclenching, muscles taut and straining.

      “Where is her body?”

      “Yonder room,” the priest said quietly. “We meant to do her honor in death.”

      “You knew I would come and kill you,” Eric said in a bitter breath.

      “She was a child, and beloved by all. What fear have we of violent death, of murder, when we work here?” the priest replied, and even in his madness, Eric knew it was true.

      “You,” he said, pointing to the priest, “you will bring me to my child. And you,” he said, pointing at Igrainia, “you will bring Margot to a room alone, and you will spend your every moment seeing that she breathes. If she ceases to do so . . .”

      He let his voice trail.

      “What of the others?” the lady asked.

      “We are here now. And we will drop down in death ourselves before we let our kindred lie in rot and die without our care. Ready a chamber for my lady wife. Nay, the master’s chamber. See that she is surrounded by the greatest possible comfort. Priest, now you will take me to my daughter.”

      The priest led him quickly from the solar, opening the door to a small room in the hall just beyond. There, on a long wooden storage cabinet, lay the body of his daughter.

      For a moment he couldn’t move.

      He felt the priest at his back.

      “There is comfort in knowing that she rests with our Lord God in Heaven—” the man began.

      “Leave me!” Eric said sharply.

      The door closed behind him instantly.

      He walked forward, forcing his feet to move. He looked down upon Aileen’s face, and his knees sagged beneath him and tears sprang to his eyes. He swallowed and reached out for her. Her poor little body was cold. He cradled her against him as if he could warm her, smoothing his long, calloused fingers through the infinitely fine tendrils of her hair. Aileen, with her laughter and her smile and her innocence of the cruelty of the world around her. Aileen, with her little arms outstretched to him, calling him, each time he had been away, her little footsteps bringing her to him. And he would bend down and scoop her into his arms, and she would cup his face in her hands and kiss his cheek and say his name again with such sweet trust that he knew that the world itself was worth saving, that freedom was worth fighting for . . .

      Innocence, trust beauty . . . dead. The sun had gone out of the world.

      This time, when his knees failed him, he fell to the floor, cradling her lifeless form in his arms.

      Alone among the sick in the solar, Igrainia looked about with dismay. Among the Scots seized and still living, there was an older woman with long, graying hair. She would survive, Igrainia thought. Her boils had broken, and she was breathing still. The pestilence here was as strange as death itself; this woman had lived many years; she appeared frail and weak. Yet she would survive.

      Another younger woman seemed to slip away as Igrainia bathed her forehead. The two others in the room were young as well, both still holding on. Igrainia lowered her head to the chest of one, and heard that the rattle had left her breathing; she, too, would survive. And the other . . .

      “Water!” came a desperate and pathetic whisper.

      “Carefully, carefully,” Igrainia warned, holding the woman’s head. She was, perhaps, twenty, almost as light as Margot. Igrainia forced her to drink slowly, then nearly dropped her head back to the pallet as a cry suddenly seemed to rip through the stone walls. It was more than a cry, more like a howl of fury, despair and anguish. It was like the sound of a wolf, lifting its head, giving a shattering curse upon heaven itself, and she knew that the Scotsman had seen his daughter.

      She looked up at a sound in the doorway and saw her maid, Jennie, a frightened and startled look upon her face as they both listened to the echoes of the cry.

      “My God. We are haunted now by monsters!” Jennie whispered. “My lady . . .”

      She ran across the room and greeted Igrainia with a fierce and trembling hug. “You did not make it away; the Scotsmen came. They are here, now, among us. They won’t understand that we have done all we can. Mary was working in the dungeons, until she fell there, she lies among them still. Father MacKinley and I are all who walk now, even Garth fell ill, you know, yet survived, the boils did not come to him, he thinks he might have suffered a similar illness as a child. Berlinda in the kitchen fell ill in the scant time you were away. Sir Robert Neville stood upon the parapets watching you go . . . then took instantly to his bed. Oh, lord, this man will kill us, won’t he, we might as well have all fallen to the plague! So few of us are left . . .”

      Jennie was still in Igrainia’s arms, shaking. Igrainia pulled away from her. Sir Eric’s agony over his child would last some time, but then he would be back.

      “Jennie, we must be strong. Tell me, first, who tends Sir Robert Neville?”

      “I keep watch over him. Molly, Merry, John . . . Tom, the kitchen lad.”

      “Where is Sir Neville?”

      “In his chambers. We are doing all we can.”

      “Why were the remaining prisoners ignored in СКАЧАТЬ