Dark Champion (6 page)

She cast bitter looks at FitzRoger, Renald, and the other knights, who sat together making plans. Or perhaps just gossiping. There was occasional soft laughter.

Imogen lay down, for sitting was becoming hard on her backside. She tentatively tried putting weight on her feet and decided it was still a bad idea. She probably could crawl around the camp on hands and knees, but that was hardly attractive.

Eventually it became clear she was going to have to do something. She had determinedly ignored her body’s needs all day and been moderate in drink, but her bladder could not be contained indefinitely.

She cast a wary eye at the men, and then quietly rolled over onto her hands and knees and began to work her way behind some bushes. Her skirt practically strangled her until she gathered it up under her paunch. Her feet hurt every time she jarred them, and soon her knees were complaining violently.

“Trying to escape? Or are you going to take the castle single-handed after all?”

Caught on all fours like an animal, her skirt bunched up so he could see most of her legs, Imogen hated him then more than she’d ever hated anyone, even Warbrick. No, not more than Warbrick. “I need to piss,” she mumbled.

There was a sharp sound that she recognized as laughter. Trust him to find such a thing funny. “I suppose you do.

How easily we forget these simple things.“ He sounded sympathetic, almost friendly. Her ears must be playing tricks. She began her laborious crawl again.

“Stop that!” he said sharply. ‘Turn around and I’ll carry you into some privacy. Beyond that I have no suggestions. I doubt it will be simple, after all.“

From pride Imogen would have refused his aid, but she feared he would just haul her up anyway, which would likely show him how unstable her “baby” was. She rolled over to sit and glared up at him. “This isn’t funny.”

He did look well-disposed. “No. I hurt my feet once and I remember how awkward it made simple things. And men have certain advantages.” He scooped her up and she struggled to get her skirts around her legs. “Stop wriggling or I’ll drop you,” he said.

She stopped, but she colored when she saw how appreciatively he eyed her bared legs.

Once they were behind some bushy yew, he lowered her gently enough to the ground and left. She watched suspiciously, but he stopped a few paces away and leaned against a tree to wait. This courteous behavior confused her more than his callousness.

She managed her business kneeling and then made sure her clothes were all in order before calling him. When she was in his arms again, she asked, “What kind of man are you?”

“What kind of question is that? I’m just a man.”

She shook her head. “Should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t be let out without a keeper,” he replied caustically. “If I say yes, will you believe me?”

He put her back down on her blanket. The light was already fading to that misty nothing when everything seems magic. His colors were all muted and the lines of his body appeared finer and more fragile.

“Yes,” she replied, surprising them both. He rose abruptly and left her.

In a few moments he returned with a heavy woolen cloak and dropped it by her. “You may want to sleep. It will be a long night.”

When he began to leave she said, “So, Lord FitzRoger, can I trust you?”

His voice floated back on the misty air. “Yes and no, Lady Imogen. Yes and no.”

And that, she thought, probably proved his words true, and offered little assurance at all.

The last of the scouts slipped back into the camp and reported. She could hear none of their words, but the preparations went smoothly forward so she assumed everything was as they had thought.

She saw FitzRoger start to peel off his armor and de Lisle go over to speak to him. She would swear the two men were arguing. About her?

Then de Lisle started to undress and FitzRoger replaced his hauberk. A change of plan?

To confirm her suspicions, de Lisle came over to her. He was wearing a dark leather jerkin over dark hose and had smeared dirt over his face.

“Any final advice, little flower?” he asked.

“I thought Lord FitzRoger was to lead the way into the castle.”

“I persuaded him that staying behind was one of the prices of leadership,” he replied with a flash of teeth. “If you sent him on a route of destruction, little one, you will destroy only me.”

“Why would I want to destroy my rescuer?” she asked uneasily.

He laughed softly and touched her cheek with a callused finger. “Your senses tell you to flee, yes? Your senses are wise. But it is too late, little flower, and in the end you will not mind so much being plucked.” Before she could question him further, he leaned forward and kissed her lips, hard and firm. “For luck, my pretty blossom.”

With that he was gone, leaving her trembling and with a tangled warning in her mind. Who or what was going to pluck the blossom? He must have meant FitzRoger. She was doubly, trebly glad of her supposed pregnancy.

When FitzRoger came over and sat by her side, she challenged him. “Do you mean to act honestly by me, my lord?”

He was chewing on a stalk of grass. “I’m going to take your castle back for you, am I not?”

“And then what?”

He turned to face her. “Do you want me to ride straight home again?”

“If I said yes, would you?”

She heard the clink of his mail as he shrugged. “Of course not. What would be the point? Warbrick would be right back. You’d be running again. I’d be here again with it all to do over. Though my men could use the exercise, your feet would never take the strain.”

Imogen had a violent urge to throw something particularly noxious at him. “What, then, will you do?”

“It is your castle, Lady Imogen. I am merely your strong right arm.”

Which sounded all very well except that she could hear the amusement in his voice. And she couldn’t think of anything to suggest other than the obvious. “Then I suppose I must ask you to man the castle until I can reorganize Carrisford’s defenses.”

“I am completely at your service, my lady.” He stood, bowed, and went to take up his watching post again.

Imogen glared after him. She had just invited him to rule her castle. She felt like the half-wit he’d called her; and yet, stretch her mind as she could, she could see no alternative until the king sent her aid.

And when the king sent aid, he would almost certainly send it in the form of a husband. Her life was twisting out of her control, and no matter how she tried she wasn’t able to stop the process.

She lay down on her back with a sigh and pulled the heavy cloak over her. It smelled of wool, horse, and sweat, but also of lavender and sandlewood. It was a strangely comforting blend of aromas, mingling as it did hard work and elegance.

The only trace of power she had left was to choose a husband before the king made his wishes known. But who should be the man of her choice?

She began another depressing review of her suitors. They hadn’t improved. The two most favored by her father had been Lord Richard of Yelston, and the Earl of Lancaster.

The Lord of Yelston was a gruff, no-nonsense man of forty who had already buried two wives. One had died of some wasting disease, and the other of fever, so the deaths could hardly be laid at his door, but it was not a reassuring history. Lord Richard had been favored by her father for his courage and unflinching honor, but even Lord Bernard had been forced to admit that the man’s attitude to women was not kindly. As far as Lord Richard was concerned, women were to be seen and not heard, and their main purpose in life was to breed sons, even though he already had three, one of whom was older than Imogen.

The Earl of Lancaster was a little younger and a great deal more sophisticated. He was a man of wealth and power, and under the previous king he had been a valued royal adviser. As a suitor he had proved to be a much more congenial companion than Sir Richard. Imogen still had those doubts, however, about his personal courage and competence. She was convinced that he was not, at heart, a strong man.

She ran through her other suitors without finding better.

The leaves above her were black against the gray of the cloudy sky. Though it wasn’t cold, there was a dampness in the night air and Imogen pulled the cloak closer, wishing for another, better choice, wishing for her father’s guidance. Perhaps she should let the king choose her husband after all.

But she did not know Henry Beauclerk, and the thought of being handed over, body and soul, to a stranger terrified her.

She pulled her mind away from that distant problem to the more immediate. How long would it take de Lisle and the dozen men who’d accompanied him to reach the castle and make their way in? They’d go cautiously, for those in the castle would maintain close watch, and there was a three-quarter moon to light the scene. Mostly the moon was muted by the clouds, but every now and then it would sail out, and clear white light would flood the castle and the open slopes leading up to it.

She guessed it would take them hours.

Hours for her to wait with only the occasional soft voices from the soldiers, the scurry of night creatures, and the screech of a hunting owl. Hours during which her recent experience of violence grew larger in her mind until she would almost give up her land and abandon her people not to have more blood shed in her name.

Then her scurrying mind threw up a fact. She sat up with a jerk. “Oh, Sweet Jesu!”

FitzRoger heard and came over. “You are sick?”

“No!” She grabbed the cold metal which covered his arm. “I forgot. How could I have forgotten?”

He twisted out of her hands and took his own ungentle grip on her shoulders. “Make sense! What did you forget?”

“The trap!” she gasped, thinking of smiling de Lisle, who would surely be in the lead. “The trap. My father had a trap installed two years ago after he felt knowledge of our secrets had escaped.”

“What trap?” he asked in a voice like a blade on her heart.

“A swinging stone. If not stepped on right it tips the person down into an oubliette.” She felt him stiffen. “But that is not all! It triggers an alarm.” At the look in his eyes she cringed. He let go of her. In fact, he threw her away.

“How could you forget such a thing?”

“It’s so new,” she gasped, tears welling. “I have never traveled the secret ways since it was put there. I was remembering what I had known… Surely if someone were to follow quickly they could warn them!”

He was already stripping off his chain hauberk and the padded haqueton he wore beneath. “Tell me exactly what is involved. And this time don’t forget anything.”

“But shouldn’t you stay here—”

“I’ve already studied the ways. Get on with it.” He was in dark braies, chausses, and linen tunic. Now he rubbed dirt into his face.

Imogen collected her wits. “Where the rock ends and the stone begins,” she explained quickly, “there are three lines gouged in the right-hand wall at shoulder height. If the leader stretches out from there he will find three more at his fingertips. He must step forward so his foot comes down at that fingertip distance. Then he must step forward as far again. It is supposed to be a normal long stride for an average man. Nothing extraordinary except that in the passageways one tends to shuffle.” Imogen had never felt so ashamed and heartsick in her life. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I truly am. I like Sir Renald.”

“But you’d sleep easy if I was in the lead?” he asked unpleasantly. “Your instincts are finely honed, are they not? Pray, Imogen of Carrisford, that I reach them in time.”

With that he had a quick word with his lieutenants and ran off toward the castle.

Imogen sat up to watch, harboring the irrational notion that by keeping her eyes fixed on him she could in some way help. Because she knew he was there she could follow his progress—a moving shadow in the dark. And because he took little care in his haste to reach his men. He ran fleetly down the slope from the trees and then started up the scrubland leading to the castle walls. She lost him then and could only guess where he was.

Then the moon sailed out from behind the clouds. Every detail of the landscape seemed as bright as day.

FitzRoger fell to the ground and lay perfectly still, but to Imogen he looked as visible as if he lay black on pristine snow. She waited with thumping heart for a cry of warning from the castle, for the whine of an arrow speeding to its mark.

Then the clouds brought darkness, and in that instant he was moving and she could breathe again. Dear Lord, how did a leader send armies into battle knowing some of the men went to meet death? She found it impossible to contemplate even one man losing his life in her enterprise.

Even if he reached de Lisle and the plan went forward, was it possible that she could win back Carrisford without loss of life? She looked down at the shadowy shapes of FitzRoger’s force, sitting quietly, some perhaps dozing, as they awaited the call to action.

Would some of them die tonight?

Which?

Another man came over to take up FitzRoger’s watching post. It was the burly fair-haired knight de Lisle had called Will, the one who had wanted to torture her. Was Bastard FitzRoger squeamish about torture? It seemed unlikely. He’d doubtless known he could win her compliance without going to such trouble.