“Oh, you giggling milkmaid,” Armand scoffed, but Nicholas could see the sweat pouring down Armand’s face even from this distance. “There are no such things as spir—Christing Hell!”
Another torch spun by Armand, glancing off the madman’s ear, and now the previously singed guard spun and wrenched at the abbey’s poor excuse for a door, pulling it completely free from the frame and tossing it aside. The guards rushed through, shoving and trampling each other in their haste to exit.
“Where are you going, you moronic imbeciles? I’m paying you to see us to France! You cannot desert us!”
Armand threw his head back and actually howled with rage. Nick grinned maliciously and eased closer to where the wall ended in a gaping hole. He peered down the length of the hall.
The only persons inside now were Armand, Simone, and Genevieve.
And Didier, of course.
Nick slid his feet in until he could perch on his haunches and began to slip around the edge of the wall.
He never saw Eldon bring the hilt of a dagger down upon the back of his head, but for an instant, Nick surely felt it.
Didier was tiring, but still he wrestled with yet another heavy torch on the wall when Eldon appeared around one side of the hall’s rear wall, dragging a large object behind him.
The large object was Nicholas.
Simone could not help but scream, jolting Lady Genevieve out of her uneasy rest.
“See what I’ve found lurking about, my lord,” Eldon said mildly, dragging Nick on his stomach by both wrists. Nick’s eyes fluttered, and a trickle of blood ran from above his right ear and down his cheek and jaw.
Eldon dropped Nicholas into a pile at Armand’s feet and then reached to his belt, withdrawing a pair of weapons and tossing them to the floor with a clang.
For the longest time, Armand stared down at Nick, as if he could not quite place him. Then he dropped to his haunches, watching Simone’s husband as he groaned and stirred. Armand glanced up at Eldon.
“Anyone following him?”
“Nay, my lord. He was quite alone.”
Armand stood. “Hmmm. How did you find me, FitzTodd? Hmm? How?” He nudged Nick’s cheek with a booted foot. “Answer me!” He nudged harder, and Nick’s head rocked against the wet and filthy floor.
Armand drew back his foot again, this time farther, as if he would truly kick him in the face.
Genevieve struggled away from Simone. “Stop, Armand! Do not!” she shouted in a hoarse voice.
Armand paused, turned to look at the woman. “Do you think to command me, wife?”
“He is myson,” Genevieve pleaded. “I beg you…”
Simone’s eyes went to the far end of the hall, where Didier still struggled with the torch. But by now the boy was so dim that he could not even grasp the weapon, let alone budge it from its iron fixture. He swiped at it, again and again, looking back over his shoulder worriedly at Nicholas, but with each attempt, his small hand only passed through the torch.
Armand stared down at Genevieve, the right side of his face drawn to nothingness, the eye looking as though it had been plucked out and the lid sewn up tight. His right fist was mangled into a lump of thorny flesh.
He at last fully resembled the monster that he was.
“Very well,” he said, his words a slithering slur. He looked to Eldon. “Get the remainder of the rope.” He stabbed his claw toward the gaping hole in the floor where the guard had lost his life. Then his arm raised, indicating the half-rotted beam leaning over the cavernous void. “Str-r-ring him up, string him up! I’ll not have him interfering.”
Genevieve choked. “Nay!”
Nicholas stirred as Eldon seized him once more. “Kings’men follow me, du Roche,” he said, his words mumbly and awkward. “Shurrounded.”
Armand laughed as Nick was dragged near the hole in the floor. “No army of any size could penetrate yonder woods. ’Tis why I chose this very location! Hidey-hidey—only by sea could they think to reach me!” He danced a sick, stumbling jig to the missing wall just as a bolt of lightning stabbed the sea, illuminating the turbulent waves. “Methinks they’d be drowned should they try!” He thrust a triumphant claw into the air.
Simone felt frozen in place, utterly helpless to do anything but watch. Didier had said that Jehan and Charles had also come—where were they? Dead?
Where, indeed, was Didier?
