THE DARK ONE: DARK KNIGHT
An Epic Medieval Tale of
Adventure and Romance
By Kathryn Le Veque
CHAPTER ONE
Year of our Lord 1486 A.D.
Mt. Holyoak Castle, the month of July
Yorkshire, England
The mid-summer sunbeat down on the earth with unmerciful force. Indeed, summers in the north central of England could be hot, but this heat was unseemly. If it was human or animal, it was sweating and complaining, and if it were anything else, it was wilting and dying.
But the heat of the summer was the last thing on Remington’s mind. Crystal sea-colored eyes, so pale and clear they were nearly unnatural, gazed from the window of her second story bower, fixed on the road that led from the keep and disappeared on the horizon. Oleg had said a rider was approaching, and she waited with more patience than she felt for the rider to show himself. She prayed with a desperate fervor that it wasn’t her husband.
Sir Guy Stoneley was captured at the conclusion of the battle of Stoke by none other than Henry Tudor himself. Loyalists to Richard III had made a valiant attempt to gain sway the country back into control of Yorkists, planning to set the Earl of Warwickupon the throne, but Henry and his army proved too powerful. The defeat had been overwhelming.
Her husband and other rebels were commandeered by the Tudor and hauled away to London. Last she heard, her husband was locked up in the White Tower. Remington prayed that he would never again see the light of day.
“They would not release him, would they?” came a faint feminine voice. “He is an enemy of the crown.”
Remington tore her eyes away from the window long enough to glance at her sixteen-year-old sister. “Nay, Rory. He’s not been released. The rider is someone else.”
“But who, then?” Rory demanded, her wildly curly red hair shaking.
Remington shook her head, her eyes once again trailing to the window. “I do not know, sweetheart. We shall have to wait and see.”
Rory let out an impatient sigh and stomped about the room nervously. When Sir Guy had left to fight, he had taken the majority of his men with him. The only men remaining behind at Mt. Holyoak were the old and the very young, and a skeleton troop of 20 men. Hardly enough against Henry and his army, but Sir Guy had been confident that the Yorkists would defeat the usurper Welsh bastard within weeks, months at most. He furthermore believed there was no possible way Henry would progress to the heart of Yorkshire, where his fortress was nestled in the Vale of York. Therefore, he took his entire complement of men and left Mt. Holyoak to the mercy of God.
The result was a massive fortress left virtually unable to defend itself, especially now that it was considered an enemy’s holding.
Remington shook her head sadly; never in her life did she imagine that she would actually be considered an enemy of thecrown, a traitor in her own country, and she had her bastard husband to thank for it.
A slight blond figure breezed into the bower, tiny and feminine. Remington’s youngest sister, Skye, stood next to her oldest sister and gazed out of the window alongside.
“It’s not him, is it?” she asked with as much courage as a thirteen-year-old girl could muster.
Remington’s eyes blazed as she turned to her baby sister. “No Skye, it is not,” she glanced at Rory, pacing the floor. “And even if it is, I swear to you that he will not touch you. I swear with God as my witness.”
Rory stopped pacing. “You cannot stop him, Remi,” she said. Rory had tried, God only knew she had. She was tough and strong for a girl, and could fight as well as some men. But when Sir Guy had forced himself upon her, again and again, she fought him every time but had ended up knocked silly while he assaulted her. And Remington…her sister, her attacker’s wife, had borne worse treatment and wounds than Rory cared to think of. Every time she thought of her sweet sister at the hands of her fiendish husband, it made her blood boil.
Remington swallowed hard, knowing that Rory had not said the words to seem cruel. It was simply a fact. Sir Guy did as he wished with his wife and her three younger sisters and there was naught anyone could do to stop him. Even his men had looked the other way when he raped eleven-year-old Skye.
“I…. I would wager to say that the rider could be Charles,” Remington said hopefully after a moment. “He rode to gather news only a few days ago. Mayhap it is him.”
“If it is, then he has returned quickly,” Rory commented.
Remington silently agreed with her sister, bringing about the original question of the rider’s identity. With a worried hand, she stroked Skye’s silky blond hair and moved away from the window.
With everything her husband had done to her sisters, the younger girls had not lost their fighting spirit. They were a handful, the two of them, too much for their aged father. The man had died three years ago of an ailing heart and never once had the strength to deal with his high-spirited daughters. The destitute baron had married off his eldest to his neighbor in exchange for the man’s protection, knowing the man was of questionable character but delivering him Remington, anyway. He knew his daughter suffered with the disgusting man, but he chose to ignore the fact. He had done what he had had to do, and moreover, there was naught he could do about the situation as it was. Remington was Sir Guy’s wife, and no longer his daughter. Remington had always hated him for overlooking her plight.
When Jasmine, Rory and Skye had come to live with her after her father’s death, Sir Guy had taken fiendish delight in raping the girls and treating them like chattel. Rory and Skye were tough and survived with their minds intact, as youngsters often do; yet Jasmine, now at the threshold age of twenty years, considered her life ruined. The younger two spent their days doing normal things young adults do, and playing evil tricks on Sir Guy’s young cousin, Charles, whereas Jasmine was a generally sullen girl and spent a good deal of her time alone, terrified of the moments when the baron would come to call on her.
Charles Stoneley was Skye’s age, a sweet and quiet boy. How on earth he was related to the deviant knight was a question for the gods, because he was nothing like Sir Guy. Too young to fight in the War of the Roses, he stayed behind, as laird of the keep and Remington loved the lad with all her heart.
