“I am going with you,” the old man declared.
“Nay, you’re not.” Nick walked to his mount and retrieved a short dagger from his pack. “When you see us coming, be ready to help me with the women. From Didier’s answers, one of them may be injured, and we’ll need hurry.”
“FitzTodd.” Jehan seized Nick’s arms, stopping him when he would have passed. “You cannot do this alone.”
“No offense, Renault, but you would do naught but slow me down. And I’ll not be alone.” Nicholas gave the man a clap on his shoulder. “Didier will be with me.”
“At least take Charles,” Renault pleaded. “He is young, strong…”
Nick ground his teeth together. He did not want the prig’s help. More likely than nay, the poor excuse for a man would get them both captured. Or wet himself.
Probably both, Nicholas decided.
“Oh, Beauville,” Nicholas called to Charles, still standing with his back turned toward them, obviously deep in thought. When the slight blonde started and turned, Nick said in an unabashedly condescending tone, “Didier and I are off to storm the keep. Would you care to join us?”
“Go to Hell, FitzTodd,” Charles said, his voice trembling, eyes wild. “I’ll fetch Simone while the fiends are disposing of your body!” He turned away again.
Nick looked at Jehan with a shrug and a wry smile. “He doesn’t fancy a siege just now.”
Jehan frowned, glancing at Charles for a moment. “FitzTodd—Nicholas—” he tried. “I beg you—”
“Nay.” Nick offered the old man his arm. “You may wish me luck, though.”
Jehan took Nick’s hand, gripping it firmly in both of his. “God’s blessing upon you.Both.” He glanced at the feather, which swayed side to side quickly, as if the boy was waving.
Nicholas nodded, and pulled free from Jehan’s hands. “Let us be off, Didier. I’ll need for you to cause a distraction. Listen closely…”
Jehan watched the large man knit a path along the edge of the wood, out of sight from those in the ruin beyond, the tiny white feather bobbing along at his hip. They faced great danger bravely, while he and Charles waited behind like helpless maidens. Jehan looked again at his young countryman, and his frown deepened.
They both had stood aside for too many years. He checked his weaponry and then followed the baron’s tracks.
Chapter 28
Nicholas crawled over the icy, jagged rocks on the seaside of Armand’s lair, Didier’s feather clutched in the sweaty creases of his hand for safekeeping—and for luck. He felt a narrow ledge of wet, sandy soil above him and pulled himself up to rest with his back against the rotten and water-swollen timbers, stifling as best he could his gasps for breath. He looked down the way he had come: nearly a sheer drop to the sea, the waves crashing against the rocks as if in frustration that he’d not fallen.
Then, to his right, scrabbling footsteps, the skittering of loosened pebbles sliding down the seacliff. A lanky, olive-skinned man in loose-fitting chausses stepped around the side of the abbey, his carefree whistle abruptly ending when his eyes met Nick’s.
“Qu’est-ceque c’est?” the man demanded in a surprised voice, but Nick quickly shot out one booted foot, collapsing the man’s knee in on itself with a sickening crunch.
The swarthy man opened his mouth to scream, and Nick swiped his leg at the man’s ankles, sending him over the cliff edge, his cry of pain and fear fading quickly in the swell of the roaring surf billowing up from the sea.
Nick’s heart pounded, and he waited for a warning cry to be raised, for another man to investigate. But no one came.
From within the keep, he heard a crash, followed by alarmed shouts in French. Nick took several deep breaths, in through his nose, out through his mouth. Then he leaned to his left to peer around the side of a jagged timber, where once a wall had protected the rear of the abbey.
The first thing Nick saw was Simone and his mother, clinging to each other on the floor near the center of the room, and Nick’s heart pounded so that it competed with the rushing surf below. Both women appeared battered and bedraggled; Simone’s hands were bound and Genevieve looked feverish, but they were both alive and whole.
Nick’s joy was blotted out by fury as Armand stepped near the women, his arms outstretched, shouting, shouting…what?
“’Tis naught but the wind, you fools!” Armand turned in a dragging circle, and Nick saw a handful of French guards skirting the wall of the room, their eyes drawn to where Nick could not see.
“Return to what you were doing!” Armand bellowed. “’Tis naught but the Christing wind—aaaghh!”
Nick’s eyebrows rose as a flaming torch went cartwheeling through the air past Armand and toward the group of guards, bouncing a shower of sparks off one man’s shoulder and making him squeal and dance.
Good show, Didier.
“’Tis the spirits of the monks!” the assaulted guard whined in French. “They are taking their revenge for our trespass of the abbey!”
