“Alyx, calm yourself. You cannot take on a woman like Elizabeth Chatworth. She’d eat you alive. You don’t know what kind of brother she grew up around. Edmund was mean, vicious, and I’ve seen Elizabeth stand up to him at times when even Roger backed down. And she adores her brother Brian. If she thought the Montgomerys caused him to be taken from her home, she’d be full of hate.”
“But she has no right! It was the Chatworths’ fault.”
“Quiet! and let’s go downstairs.” He eyed her sharply. “And none of your tricks of writing songs about feuds. Do you understand me?”
She nodded once, but she didn’t like making such a promise.
***
It was late at night, and most of the guests were lying drunken on the floor or sprawled across the tables when a servant whispered to the man sitting in the corner. With a smile, the man rose and went outside to greet these newly arrived guests.
“You’ll never believe who is here,” the man said to the one dismounting.
“What! no greeting?” he asked sarcastically. “No concern for my safety? Come, John, you’re letting your teeth show.”
“I have remained sober to tell you this. That should be enough.”
“True, that is a great sacrifice.” He gave the reins of his horse to a waiting servant. “Now, what is so important that it can’t wait until I’ve had some wine myself?”
“Ah, Pagnell, you’re too impatient. Remember that little songbird this winter? The one who knocked you over the head?”
Pagnell stiffened, glaring at John. It was all he could do to keep from fingering the ugly scar on his forehead. He’d had headaches ever since that night, and although he’d tortured to death some of the people from her town, no one would tell him where she was. Every time a pain shot through his head, he vowed he’d see her burn for what she’d done to him. “Where is she?”
John laughed deep in his throat. “Inside and swelled out with a brat. She’s traveling with a pretty lad and the two of them are singin’ as pretty as you please.”
“Now? I thought everyone would be asleep.”
“They are, but I marked where the lad and the songbird stretched out.”
Pagnell stood still for a moment, contemplating his next move. When he and his friends had gone over the town wall looking for Alyx, he’d been drunk and so had bungled the job. Now he mustn’t make that mistake again.
“If she cried out,” Pagnell said, “would she receive help?”
“Most of them are dead drunk; the snoring’s so loud a charge of gunpowder might not be heard.”
Pagnell looked up at the old stone walls. “Does this place have a dungeon, some place for keeping prisoners before they’re executed?”
“Why wait? We’ll tie her to a stake and burn her as the sun rises.”
“No, some people frown at that, and with the King in this melancholy mood, who knows how he’ll react? We’ll do this legal. A cousin of mine is conducting court not far from here. We’ll toss the slut in the cellar, then I’ll talk to my cousin and when I return, we’ll have a trial.Thenwe’ll watch her burn. Now show me where she is.”
Alyx was lying in an uncomfortable sleep, trying her best to position her big stomach, when a hideous whisper sounded in her ear. The voice, one she had never forgotten, and never would, sent shivers down her spine, made her skin tighten.
“If you want your little play fellow to live, you’ll be quiet,” came the voice.
Pressed against her throat was the sharp steel of a knife. She didn’t need to open her eyes to see Pagnell’s face leering into hers. It was a face that had haunted her dreams for months.
“Have you thought about me, sweetheart?” he whispered, his face very, very close to hers. His hands went down to caress her hard stomach. “You gave to somebody else what you fought me for. You’re going to die for that.”
“No,” Alyx whispered as the knife pressed forward.
“You going to go peacefully, or do I have to slip a knife into his heart?”
She knew well who he meant. Jocelin was asleep not a foot from her, his breath coming even and deep, not even aware that her life was in danger.
“I’ll go,” she managed to say.
Trembling, too frightened to cry, Alyx heaved herself upward, Pagnell’s knife scraping, cutting the skin of her throat once. It wasn’t easy to make her way through the bodies sprawled on the floor. Each time she stumbled, Pagnell twisted her arm behind her back, almost pulling it from the socket.
