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  “For that matter, how do I know if she’s been ravished? How would you know?”

  “I would examine her myself.” The earl paused, then said, fury lacing his voice, “That damned fool Colchester says he won’t have her for his son if she isn’t pure. His foul mother gave his father the pox and killed him because of the men she took to her bed. He’s terrified that if Daria is ravished, she’ll kill his precious son with disease as well.”

  Roland was seeing the earl thrusting his fingers into the girl’s body to feel if her maidenhead were still intact. To humiliate another thus was incomprehensible to him, particularly a girl who had no recourse but to accept the shame of it.

  “Colchester isn’t the only unwedded man in the kingdom,” Roland said mildly. “Wed her to another. She’s an heiress, I gather. Most men aren’t so absolute in their requirements for a wife, I doubt.”

  “She is to wed Colchester, none other. It is the only match I will accept.”

  And then, finally, Roland understood. The Earl of Reymerstone had made an agreement with the Earl of Colchester, and what he would gain in the marriage mattered more to him than the dowry. Roland wondered what the bargain was that the two men had struck.

  “If she’s a virgin when I rescue her, she will be a virgin when she arrives here.”

  “Excellent. If she isn’t, then I will kill her and you as well, de Tournay, and I will keep her dowry for myself, since there is nothing else for me.”

  Roland believed he would most certainly try. He nodded curtly and remounted Cantor. He was on his way to London now, to see the king; then he would ride to Cornwall. He needed to see Graelam de Moreton; then he wanted to visit Thispen-Ladock, just to look at the stone walls and the green hills, just to stroll through the inner bailey and speak to all the people, and know that what he was doing would make this possible for him. He had the time, and in the next two weeks he would make all his plans. He would travel northward from Cornwall to the southeast corner of Wales to Tyberton Castle, domain of the Clares since Duke William’s conquest of England. He knew now how he would present himself to Edmond of Clare. He smiled, seeing himself in this new role. He also admitted, his smile widening, that he had a bit of studying to do before he arrived at Tyberton Castle.

  Tyberton Castle, on the River Wye

  May 1275

  Ena lightly slapped the folds of Daria’s silk gown into a more pleasing shape. “There, it’s lovely ye are now. But the man will find ye lovely as well, the good Lord above knows that. Ye’ll take care, won’t ye, little mistress?”

  “Aye,” Daria said. Ena’s warnings, admonitions, and portents were daily fare and their impact had dimmed with repetition. Edmond of Clare was surely bent on ravishment, and today would be the day. But he didn’t ravish her, and the days went by. Slowly, so very slowly. She wished to heaven that Ena wouldn’t call her “little mistress.” It was what he called her, and she hated it. She’d been here since the twelfth of March, nearly two months now, and she wanted to scream with the boredom, the fear, with the awful tension that would never leave her. She was a prisoner and she didn’t know what her captor wanted of her. At the beginning, she’d spoken from her terror, not measuring the possible consequences of her words. She asked him, fear making her voice harsh, “If you ransom me, will you let me go? Is it just my dowry you want? Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell me?”

  Edmond of Clare had slapped her, not really all that hard, but hard enough so that she’d felt the pain of it throughout her body and she’d reeled with the force of it, nearly falling to her knees. He watched the pain take her for a few moments, then said easily, this matter of her impertinence duly handled, “You will do as I tell you and you will ask me no more questions. Now, little mistress, would you like to eat some delicious stewed lamb?”

  He baffled her. She feared him, yet he hadn’t struck her since that first time. Of course she’d tried to give him no provocation. She saw violence in him, leashed in her presence, but she could feel it, just as she’d always felt it in her Uncle Damon. She saw his control tested once when a servant had spilled some thickly sauced meat on his arm. She saw the vein jump in his throat, saw his clenched fists, but his voice issued forth mild, and his reproof was gentle. Then why, she’d wondered, had the servant looked like he was shortly to die and was wonderfully surprised when he hadn’t? She still didn’t know anything. If he was ransoming her, as she had to assume that he was, she didn’t know what he’d demanded; she didn’t know if her uncle had responded. She didn’t know anything, and it was infuriating and frustrating. And then she would think: all he did was slap me. And she decided she would ask him again. She wouldn’t demand, she would ask softly, something she should have learned to do with her uncle. Ah, but it galled her to be the supplicant.

  Ena stepped back and folded her arms over her scrawny chest. “Ye’ve grown, a good inch taller ye are, and look at yer ankles, poking out over yer feet, and that gown of yers pulls across yer breasts. Ye must have new gowns, at least cloth so ye can sew yerself something that will fit ye. Ask the earl to fetch ye some nice woolen cloth—”

  “That’s quite enough, Ena. I won’t demand cloth for new gowns. I care not if my ankles offend you—it matters not to me.”

  “Ah, if only we could leave here and ye could wed with Ralph of Colchester as ye were supposed to.”

  Daria shivered at that gruesome thought. “I would rather become a nun.”

  These sarcastically spoken impious words brought a loud groan from Ena and a quick crossing over her chest. “Ralph of Colchester was to be yer husband. If he was weak, he would still have been yer husband, and that makes all the difference. He’s no savage marauder who should have been a priest, a crazy man who holds ye prisoner and makes ye pray in his damp chapel until yer knees are cramped and bruised red.”

  “I wonder,” Daria mused aloud, ignoring her maid, “I do wonder if Ralph of Colchester will still wish to marry me. It’s a matter of the size of my dowry, I think, not the question of my virtue or my captor’s virtue. That and how much his father needs my coin. It’s an interesting question, though. Mayhap I’ll ask the earl.”

  That brought a louder shriek from Ena, and Daria lightly patted her arm. “Nay, I jest. Don’t carry on so.” She turned and walked to the narrow window, only a narrow arrow slit, actually, with a skin hanging above it to be lowered when the weather was foul. For the past three days the sun had shone down warm and bright.

  But Daria shivered. She stared down into the inner bailey of Tyberton Castle. It was a huge fortress, its denizens numbering into the hundreds, and there were people and animals and filth everywhere. The only time there was quiet was on Sundays. The earl held services and all were required to attend for the endless hours. Until a week ago.

  Edmond of Clare was devoutly religious. He spent the hours from five in the morning until seven on his knees in the cold Tyberton chapel. Then his priest held a private Mass for him and only for him, for which all the castle folk were grateful. The earl had been on a rampage for the past four days, for his priest had left Tyberton during a storm one night and no one knew why.

  Daria knew why, as, she suspected, did most of the inhabitants of Tyberton, though they would never say so. The priest had no calling for such sacrifice as Clare demanded. He was fat and lazy and all the services had finally ground him down. He’d hated the cold dark chapel, hated the endless hours of absolving the Earl of Clare. Daria had heard him mumble about it, complaining bitterly that he would die of frozen lungs before the winter was out.

  Well, now the chapel was empty. There was no mumbled illiterate Latin service to suffer through, no chilled bones from the damp cold air blowing through the thick gray stones from the River Wye. No more suffering for the nose, for the priest had smelled as foul as the refuse pile at the back of the castle. The fellow was gone. All were relieved except the earl.

  Daria had found it odd, though, that the earl, such a fanatic in matters of the soul, didn’t
speak a bit of Latin. The priest had slurred his words, creating them from the sounds he knew the earl would accept, for he himself couldn’t pronounce half of them properly and the earl seemed not to notice.

  Daria spoke and read Latin, as did her mother, who’d been her teacher. She’d said nothing to the earl about it.

  She turned at the knock on her small chamber door. It was one of the earl’s men, a thin-faced youth named Clyde who had the habit of looking at Daria as if she were a Christmas feast and he a man begging to stuff himself. She simply stared at him, not moving.

  “The earl wishes to see ye,” he said, and as he spoke, his eyes traveled down her body, stopping only when they reached the pointed toes of her leather slippers.

  She merely nodded, still not moving, waiting for Clyde to leave, which he finally did, his expression sour. Once she’d moved to do his bidding, only to feel Ena’s hands on her as she passed.

  “Ye be careful, young mistress,” Ena hissed in her ear. “Ye stay out of his reach. Pray until yer tongue falls out, but keep away from him.”

  “Please,” Daria said, shook off Ena’s hand, and left the chamber. She lifted her skirts as she stepped carefully down the deeply cut stone steps that wound downward into the great hall of Tyberton. There were only three men in the hall and one of them was Edmond of Clare. He was speaking in a low voice to his master-at-arms, a Scotsman named MacLeod. Daria watched Edmond make a point with his hands, and shivered, remembering when his right hand, palm open, had struck her cheek. He was a big man, with the fierce red hair of his Scottish mother and the dark Celtic eyes of his father. His complexion was white as a dead man’s. He usually spoke softly, which made it all the more unsettling when he suddenly exploded in a rage. He was a giant of a man, his chest the width of a tree trunk, the lower part of his pale white face covered with a curling red beard. He was handsome in a savage sort of way, Daria would give him that, but she’d heard that his wife, dead for only six months now, her infant son with her, had lived in fear of him. She was inclined to believe it.

  She didn’t move, but rather waited until he noticed her, which he did. “Come hither,” he called. “I have gained us a new priest. His name is Father Corinthian and he will say Mass for us tomorrow. He is a Benedictine.”

  Daria walked forward, noticing the priest in his cheap wool cowl for the first time. “Father,” she said.

  “My child,” said Father Corinthian. He pulled back the hood from his monk’s cowl and took her hand. Daria felt a shock that drove the color from her face. She wanted to pull her hand away, but she didn’t. She looked into the priest’s dark eyes and she knew him.

  She knew him to the very depths of her, and it was as terrifying as it was unexpected, this amazing and overwhelming knowledge, and she was consumed with dark feelings that she couldn’t comprehend and that made her reel with their force. Here was something that was fearful yet real, and it was overpowering. For the first time in her life, Daria fainted, collapsing in a heap to the rush-strewn floor.

  2

  Daria awoke with Ena crouched over her, her face parchment white, her lips trembling with fear and prayers.

  “I’m all right,” Daria said, and then turned her face away. But she wasn’t all right; something had happened that she didn’t understand. It was frightening. No, nothing was all right.

  “But, little mistress, what happened? The earl just carried you here. He said naught. Did he speak harshly to you or strike you in front of that new priest? Did you speak sharply to him? Did he—?”

  “Please, Ena, take your leave. The earl did nothing to me. I wish to rest. Leave me now.”

  The old woman sniffed and retreated to the far corner of the chamber. Daria stared toward the narrow window. A shaft of bright sunlight knifed through, illuminating dust motes in its wake. What had happened to her in the great hall was inexplicable. The priest, that beautiful young man who was a Benedictine, a young man who was dedicated to God—and she’d somehow known him, recognized him, felt his very being deep inside of her. How could that be? It made no sense.

  It had happened but once before in her seventeen years, this prescience, this foreknowledge, this tide of feeling that had been the curse of her grandmother, a bent old woman who’d died howling curses at her son and daughters. A crazy old woman with wild stringy hair and mad eyes, eyes the same color green as were hers.

  When Daria was twelve her mother had told her that her father would be coming home to them shortly to visit with them until he left for the Holy Land. He was currently in London, fighting in a tourney. It was in that instant Daria saw her father, handsome and awesomely forbidding in his gleaming silver armor, astride his destrier, and he was charging, his visor down, lance at the ready. She saw him as clearly as she saw her mother who stood in front of her, staring and silent. She saw his lance buffeted to the side, saw him lifted off his destrier’s back and flung into the dirt. She saw the other man’s destrier rear back in fright and come crashing down on her father’s head. She heard the crunching of the metal, the smashing of bone, and she screamed with the sight of it, the sound of it, the dark feel of it in her mind, the bloody horror of it. And she’d told her mother what she’d seen, but her mother had somehow known she was seeing something, and she was already as pale as the wimple that hid her beautiful auburn hair. “No,” her mother had whispered; then she’d left Daria, nearly running, and Daria had known her mother was afraid of her in that moment.

  And the word had reached them five days later. Her father’s body followed three days after that, and he was buried on the family hillock, his body never again seen by his wife because the destrier had smashed his skull under his hooves.

  Now it had happened again. Only this time it wasn’t death and terror and pain that wouldn’t cease. This time it was a strange shock of recognition, a knowing of another person she’d never seen before. She didn’t understand what it meant or how to account for it or explain it. Was this poor young priest to die? She didn’t think so, but she simply didn’t know. But she’d looked at him and felt something deep within her move, open, and then he’d taken her hand as any priest might, and the touch of him had pierced into her, leaving her naked and raw, confused feelings flooding through her.

  And like a lackwit, she’d fainted. She’d fainted in front of the earl, and she’d known even as she’d felt herself falling that she was still gaping at the young priest.

  There came a knock on the chamber door. Daria turned to see Ena speed to the door and open it slightly to peer out. She heard Edmond of Clare’s voice. He pushed Ena out of his way, nearly knocking the old woman to the floor, and strode into the room.

  “You’re awake,” he said, looking down at her from his great height. “What happened to you? Are you sickening with something?”

  She shook her head, fearing in that moment what might come out of her mouth if she spoke.

  “Then what?”

  Should she tell him that her grandmother had died mad, died cursed as a witch, and that mayhap she was a witch too? Tell him that the priest who’d shriven her grandmother had been pale and stammering with fear in the presence of that mad old woman? “I am sorry to upset you. I just suddenly felt faint. The Benedictine priest—he is to remain here at Tyberton?”

  “Aye. I wanted you to meet him, but you fell at our feet, and the poor young fellow was naturally concerned. You frightened him, and now I must wonder if you did it apurpose, to beg his help, mayhap? To beg his assistance to help you escape me?”

  “No.”

  “I did not really think so. You haven’t the guile, Daria, to gain your ends through perfidy.”

  She stared at him, wondering how he could come to believe she was so transparent. She prayed a moment would come when she would best him with her perfidy.

  “He appears a pious and learned young man,” Edmond of Clare continued after a moment. “The Benedictines spawn dedicated priests, from what I hear. He will remain here in my service.”

  “What i
s his name?”

  “He said the name given him at the Benedictine abbey was Father Corinthian. He will hold a Mass for us on the morrow morning. You and I will attend, no one else. My soul is needful of cleansing. As for yours, your sheltered youth sustains you, but still God’s word will not come amiss to your ears.”

  Daria didn’t want to see the young priest again, and yet at the same time she wanted to see him, touch him, just once more, just to see if the first time had been a vague aberration, an accident brought about by her fear and frustration at her captivity.

  He was a priest, this man who wasn’t a man. He was God’s man, God’s weapon, God’s gift to man. “I will come to the chapel,” she said, and Edmond of Clare stared down at her silently for another long moment, lightly touched his fingers to her hair. “So soft you are,” he said, then left her.

  She lay there frozen. There was no meanness in his look or his light touch, but a certain tenderness, and it terrified her. It wasn’t lust, yet there was lust in it, and something else far more harmful as well. She closed her eyes. Her heart pounded loudly.

  That evening at the late meal, she came slowly into the great hall, glad for its loudness, its sheer number of people, for their very presence was a sort of protection for her. She saw Edmond already seated in his great chair, the new priest seated at his left. The chair to his right—her chair—was empty. Her step lagged. She couldn’t take her eyes off the priest. She saw in the rich light of the flambeaux that his dark hair shone clean and silky. He was dressed simply, but unlike other priests she’d known, both he and his clothing were clean. Even in the loose tunic, she could tell that he was lean and well-formed; his didn’t seem to be the body of a man who partook only of spiritual exercise. He looked fit and active, a man who could just as easily take his place as a knight and a warrior. But his face held her and she couldn’t take her eyes off him as she walked slowly through the throngs of people to the dais. His features were finely hewn, from his arched black brows to the cleft in his chin. He was nearly dark as an Arab, his eyes nearly black as his hair. As he spoke, he used his hands, eloquent narrow hands, to make a point. His expression was intelligent, and more than that, it was clever. He was a priest, surely, but he was a handsome man, and to look upon him gave one pleasure. Suddenly he looked up and saw her, and his face stilled.