And then she was gone, the black night and the cold, blowing snow rushing in to fill the void she had left.
“Alys,” he whispered into the wind. “Alys, the road is north …”
Chapter 13
The only other time in Alys’s life when she had been almost as scared as she was now, was when she had finally accepted that her mother was going to die. She had not been scared for Amicia—the Foxe matron was so sure of her better reward, and had suffered humiliatingly for so long—it was a blessing upon her to finally go in peace to meet her beloved Morys once more. Then, as now, Alys had been scared for herself, but her fears were of what was to become of her happy, predictable life, how she and Cecily and Sybilla would fare with no one to lead the family and defend against the king’s accusations save the cool, eldest daughter.
Sybilla had always possessed a will of pure steel, true, but she had no experience outside of her family and Fallstowe. Their mother, Amicia, had years of life behind her, coming as a young woman from Bordeaux to England, marrying Morys Foxe, standing at his side as he ruled Fallstowe in the midst of the civil turmoil that marked Henry III’s rule. That experience and strength were the very reasons Amicia herself had held the demesne after her husband’s death. So even though Sybilla had been intraining by her mother for hours upon hours as the end drew near, sometimes going as many as three days without leaving Amicia’s chamber, Sybilla was no battle-wizened, gray haired lord. Alys’s eldest sister was but a score and seven, and though her way with men was like magic, she had never even come close to betrothal, as far as Alys knew.
Alys wondered for the thousandth time what Amicia and Sybilla had talked about those last months, what was so secretive and intricate that not only were Cecily and Alys forbidden from their mother’s chamber while Sybilla was within, they were warned against simple inquiry. After Amicia’s death, her personal maid—the only other person save old Graves who had been allowed in the chamber during these meetings between Amicia and her eldest—had simply vanished from Fallstowe.
Alys huffed ragged breaths as she stumbled through the forest, lit only by a waning moon intermittently filtered through clouds which spit snow at her occasionally, as if for sport. She’d run straight away into countless trees, fallen over logs and into washes parallel to animal trails. She could feel her scraped palms burning in the cold blackness as they reached out before her, the ache in her twisted knee, the fear spiraling up her spine with greedy haste. She guessed she had been running in a southerly direction for almost an hour now, and still, she had not crossed the road.
She thought of Piers, alone and helplessly ill, lying like so much bait before a roaring fire with only one tiny monkey for protection, and the image caused a sob to swell in her throat.
And so she continued to think upon Sybilla instead, and to her surprise and regret, Alys realized that she longed for no other living person as badly as she wanted her eldest sister right at that moment. Sybilla would knowwhat to do. Sybilla would waste no time wandering around a remote stretch of deep forest in the dead of night with a snowstorm threatening. No, Sybilla would not tolerate being lost. Actually, Sybilla would have likely had the good sense to not be in this situation at all. Alys tried to think of what she could have done differently.
She should have not bothered with food in Pilings, saving her—albeit very convincing—theatrical display, and should have instead stolen a horse. She and Piers would be almost to London now certainly, even riding double. But she had seen no stables obvious in the village, and likely she would have been caught. Had she procured a mount, ‘twas likely she and Piers would not have shared the night in the rock shelter, a memory already too dear to Alys to consider erasing.
Perhaps when she and Piers had been at Fallstowe’s very gate, Alys should have gone ahead into the castle and gathered all the supplies they would need and caught him later in the wood. But no, at that point, he would have gladly gone on without her and she would have never found him. Then he would be completely alone now, and possibly already dead from whatever sickness was claiming him.
Perhaps she should have never insisted on following him in the first place.
Or, perhaps, she should have heeded Sybilla’s wishes and not gone to the Foxe Ring at all.
Alys realized she was crying as she panted and groped her way through the maze of flurries and sudden trees. Had she listened to Sybilla, she who had single-handedly held Fallstowe better than any man could have, who had always tried to accommodate Alys’s wishes, who had allowed her sisters to keep their lives and their home by sheer cunning and strength and brazen defiance to theirvery king, Alys would right now be in her safe, warm rooms, helping to plan her own extravagant wedding.
But no, her foolishness had led her to believe that her life was worth more than what Sybilla had selflessly struggled to give her. Alys had wanted everything and then even more. Never satisfied. Childish wishes, petulant rebellion—Alys could at last see all of her faults of which she had been accused. And she knew she was guilty. Sybilla had been right all along. Even Piers had taken correct measure of her the very first night they had met. It had been so obvious to everyone save spoiled, demanding Alys Foxe herself.
She looked back at her life up until that moment with bittersweet longing, and with the knowledge that no matter how she eventually came out of this cursed wood—whether on to London with Piers or back to the haven that was Fallstowe—that old life was no more. She no longer cared that Sybilla had commanded that she marry Clement Cobb. Alys realized now that it had been she who had backed her sister into that corner, and then railed at her for doling out the consequence, and there were fates well worse than that gentle privilege. She wanted to thank Sybilla now, for so many things, and to tell her she was sorry. So sorry, and so late.
But what she wanted more was for Piers to live. To live, and to carry on to London and see his victory, however he needed it to play out. In her heart, she belonged to Piers, and she would do whatever it took to save his life and his future, even if it meant the destruction of her own.
She still truly believed that fate had brought them together in the Foxe Ring, and that they had met—and Alys had stubbornly clung to him—for a purpose greater than either of them knew. Perhaps part of that purpose was to cause Alys to realize the folly of her own life, and to thatend, it was greatly accomplished, but she still thought that it was also because she was the only one who could help Piers seize what was rightfully his. What Bevan and Judith Angwedd had so cruelly tried to steal.
When she held up her life in comparison to his, Alys was shamed to her very soul. She desperately tried to recall a time previous when she had acted wholly for the benefit of another person, and to her mortification, she could not.
“Well then, let this one count,” she gasped to the trees, as if pleading with them to consider her intentions and pick up their roots like skirts to create an avenue to her rescue.
Perhaps the trees heard her, and arrived at their judgment. For with her very next clumsy step, a rope tightened around her ankle, and with a crack and a whoosh, Alys was jerked off her feet. Her back slammed against the frozen ground for an instant and then she was dragged upward, her temple scraping against the jagged end of a dead, broken branch. Her ascent came to a sudden, bobbing halt and she was left hanging upside down, swaying from the underside of a tree.
It began to snow in earnest, hinting at a silent, grim finale to Alys Foxe’s grand adventure.
Alys began to scream.
Cecily Foxe paced.
Sybilla and the soldiers had been gone for almost two days, and there was no word yet, from or about her older or younger sister. The fire in the hearth closest to the lord’s table roared, but still Cecily shivered as her slippers traced over a single line of seven stones, back and forth. She gripped her upper arms and rubbed at them periodically,so firmly that she knew she would be bruised the next day, but was unable to stop. She felt dizzy, and as though she was freezing.
In Sybilla’s absence, Cecily was effectively head of Fallstowe, and the very idea of it had obviously made her immensely fretful—feeling sensations that were completely at odds with her reality. She knew they were naught but a side effect of her concern for her family. They were not real.
Not real.
Never had Cecily been in residence at the castle without at least one other Foxe, and as far as she knew, Sybilla herself had not left Fallstowe’s lands since the day their mother had died. Cecily considered returning to the chapel to pray and keep her vigil, but the cold of that pious space at well past midnight had been what sent her fleeing to the great hall in the first place.
“Shall I keep vigil with you, Lady Cee?” Graves’s deep, mellow voice came out of the darkness, and Cecily started, clutching herself even more tightly.
She turned to face the old steward, bringing the fingertips of one hand up to rub at her temple where a sudden ache had bloomed. The skeletal old man stood just inside the perimeter of firelight, his hands hanging at his sides, his shoulders pulled back in his trademark stance of attention.
