“’Twould only turn the water there to salt.”
“True enough.”He held her close, hoping she was not disappointed that she had worked so diligently on a banner he did not need.To his surprise, he realized she was watching him.
“Accept my token,” she urged.“Let it fly from the highest tower of the keep, so that all know the Count de Pereille defends his own.”
Dagobert grinned, claiming another triumphant kiss.
“And that he looses a new banner to herald the arrival of his son.”
“Aye,” Alienor said.“That, too.Let them know that you do not surrender.”
“Men on the walls!Awake!Men on the walls!”
The cry in the night had the entire keep scrambling from the warmth of their beds in early November.Dagobert was already shrugging into his hauberk when Alienor awakened.
“Don your warmestpelisson,” he commanded her tersely and she noted that he buckled on his sword.She rose from bed, dressing quickly and gathering Thierry close.Shouts rose from outside and her heart pounded in fear that they would lose the keep this night and ’twould all be over.Giselle appeared out of the shadows with her wool mantle and shoes.Alienor could only watch Dagobert’s grim countenance while the maid tended to her with shaking hands.
He tugged his mail coif over his head and threw the two women a sharp look.
“To the storeroom with you,” he said and Alienor nodded immediate agreement.Truly he expected the worst if he would send them all there.“Take all that cannot fight and stay there until we return.”He bent and touched his lips to hers, brushing one hand across his son’s brow before he pivoted and was gone.
“God bless,” Alienor whispered.She was almost certain that Dagobert had turned to look back from the top of the stairs, but in the darkness ’twas hard to be certain.
“May they come back to us,” Giselle whispered beside her.
Alienor dismissed her own fears, knowing that the others would look to her and Iolande for strength.She took her maid’s cold hand in her own and gave it a squeeze, summoning a smile when Iolande strode into view.
“Come, we must get to the storeroom,” Iolande said.
Alienor followed her mother-in-law along with the other women.
The storeroom lay beneath the hall, burrowed out of the rock underlying the keep itself.As the women reached the hall, the men’s shouts grew more clear.The echo of steel-on-steel rang terrifyingly close, and they hastened of one accord to the stairs.Someone had the foresight to take a lamp, and its flicker easily illuminated the cramped space with its rough-hewn walls.The space was filled with anxious women instead of winter provisions.
There was no way to measure the passing of the night.Alienor guessed the time by the number of feedings Thierry demanded, while others watched the oil slowly disappear in the base of the lamp.The muted sounds of the fighting raged above them, first louder then more distant.The keep finally fell into a silence that seemed both expectant and eerie.The women studied each other, obviously wondering what had happened.No one spoke, and the sound of footsteps in the hall above brought a gasp to more than one pair of lips.
The oil ran out in that moment and the storeroom was plunged into darkness.
There were countless footsteps, Alienor corrected, her heartbeat beginning to race.Was the hall over-run?Thierry dozed, oblivious to the tension around him, and she wished she could echo his tranquility.Did the attackers come to claim the spoils?Had all of Montsalvat’s knights been lost in the night?
The trapdoor to the hall swung open overhead and Alienor blinked in the sudden light.The other women must have been similarly surprised for they made not a sound.The dark shadow of a man came down the ladder into the space with haste and Alienor swallowed a scream as he reached for her.
“’Tis safe enough to climb up,” Dagobert said.Alienor scanned his shadowed features as her eyes adjusted to the light.He seemed unscathed but ’twas hard to be certain in the half-darkness.“Tell me that you did not sit in the shadows all this time,” he jested, looking around.The women exhaled as one, laughing amongst themselves as they recognized their liege lord.
“Are you hurt?”Alienor demanded under her breath as Dagobert helped her to her feet.His quick head shake of denial all the answer she needed.He glanced at the others awaiting his response and gave the women a reassuring smile.
“Nay, there are but four casualties amongst us, all of them honorable losses.”He crossed the storeroom and quickly clasped one woman’s hands within his own.“Corba, I give you my most sincere regrets, for Philippe was amongst the four.”Dagobert held her hands steadfastly as she gulped against her tears.When she had composed herself, he reached out to another woman, her plump face dissolving into tears before he spoke.
“Guirand and Philippe always fought back to back,” she whispered, evidently anticipating his news.
Dagobert nodded and the two new widows embraced each other in their sorrow.“And thus they fought to the last, for the end came quickly to them.”
“Have they...”Corba began
Alienor was glad that Dagobert spared her the need to say the words.“They have been taken to the chapel.I would ask you to wait for the priest’s summons before you go there.”
Alienor understood that their deaths had been brutal.The two widows seemed to understand that, as well, each clutching the shoulder of the other.
Dagobert turned to the expectant sea of faces and ran one hand over his hair.“The other two were knights hired to the house and unwed—Arnaud de Montlaut and Guillaume de Lombers.”The remaining women breathed a sigh of relief, a subdued ripple of conversation passing through their ranks as a number of them reached out to the two newly bereaved.
